Yahweh sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and raised. It grew up together with him, and with his children. It ate of his own food, drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was like a daughter to him. A traveler came to the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to prepare for the wayfaring man who had come to him, but took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared it for the man who had come to him.”
David’s anger burned hot against the man, and he said to Nathan, “As Yahweh lives, the man who has done this deserves to die! He must restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity!”
Nathan said to David, “You are the man. This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that would have been too little, I would have added to you many more such things. Why have you despised Yahweh’s word, to do that which is evil in his sight? You have struck Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 4, 5, 8, 9 Because David lay now drowned in sin, the loving…
Because David lay now drowned in sin, the loving mercy of God, which suffereth not his to perish, waketh his conscience by this similitude, and bringeth him to repentance.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–9 2Sa 12:1 And the LORD sent Nathan unto David.…
2Sa 12:1 And the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor.
Ver. 1. And the Lord sent Nathan unto David.] He must be of God’s sending, that shall effectually awaken conscience, and speak to the heart. Nathan the prophet {2Sa 7:2} - a man so highly esteemed by David, that he called one of his sons by his name (say some), made him tutor to his son Solomon, and had him of his Cabinet Council {1Ki 1:1-53} - is here purposely sent to let good David feel the bruise of his fall; to be unto him as Paul’s sister’s son was to the chief captain; as the cock, or rather as Christ’s look, was to Peter; to arouse him out of that dead lethargy wherein he had lain for three quarters of a year together; and to convert him from the error of his way. If God’s best children have been sometimes suffered to sleep in sin, at last he hath awakened them in a fright. Now because men that are awakened hastily out of a deep and sweet sleep are apt to take it ill, and to brawl with their best friends, wise Nathan, non aperte, sed per ambages, beginneth his reproof, not in plain terms, but by fetching about a form of speech - as she saith, 2Sa 14:20; by an allegory or apologue, he first fisheth out of David what the law was, and then forceth him to pronounce sentence of death against himself. {a} David was a prophet, yet needed he a prophet to be sent unto him; as one physician to another; but the sound to the sick, as Chrysostom saith. {b}
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And he came unto him] In conclave Davidis, into David’s closet; for whereas some have thought that Nathan dealt now with David in the hearing of his courtiers and captains, it is more likely that he did it privately, that he might the more easily work and win upon him. Hitherto all the king’s care had been to conceal his sin from the world, - which yet he could not do with all his skill, for the enemies had got it by the end, {2Sa 14:1-33} - and although his conscience had galled him betwixt whiles, when he heard the lectures of the law, and groaned under a great fit of sickness, as some gather from Psa 32:3-4 Psa 6:1-10 Psa 38:1-22, yet he turned the deaf ear, and continued in the hardness of his heart till the prophet came home to him, and dealt plainly and privately with him. Great is the benefit of conference and private admonition. Luther was much helped this way by Staupicius; Galeacius by Peter Martyr; Junius by a countryman of his not far from Florence; Senarclaeus by John Diazins; Latimer by blessed St Bilney, as he styleth him; Dr Taylor by that angel of God, John Bradford, who counted that hour lost wherein he had not done some good with his hand, pen, or tongue. Private admonition, saith one, is the pastor’s privy purse, as princes have theirs, besides their public disbursements. It repented good Mr Hiron, and troubled him on his death bed, that he had been so backward to it, and barren of it.
There were two men in one city.] By this pretty parable, Nathan maketh David self-condemned, or ever he was aware; and useth his own tongue as a lance to rip up and heal his own heart. {c}
{a} Velut prudens medicus ferrum tegebat. - Aug. Ut secantem gladium sentiret aeger antequam cerneret. - Greg.
{b} Tanquam medicus ad medicum, sed sanus ad aegrotum. - Chrys.
{c} Aug., Hom. 21.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 Nathan, the prophet, 2Sa 7:2; 1Ki 1:8. When the…
Nathan, the prophet, 2Sa 7:2; 1Ki 1:8. When the ordinary means did not awaken David to repentance, God useth an extraordinary course. Thus the merciful God pities and prevents him who had so horribly forsaken and forgotten God.
Nathan prudently ushereth in his reproof with a parable, after the manner of the eastern nations and ancient times, that so he might surprise David, and cause him unawares to give sentence against himself. He manageth his relation as if it had been a real thing; and demands the king’s justice in the case. Though the application of this parable to David be easy and obvious, yet it matters not if some circumstances be not so applicable; because it was fit to put in some such clauses, either for the decency of the parable, or that David might not too early discover his designs.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 It seems to have been a great while after…
It seems to have been a great while after David had been guilty of adultery with Bath-sheba before he was brought to repentance for it. For, when Nathan was sent to him, the child was born (Sa2 12:14), so that it was about nine months that David lay under the guilt of that sin, and, for aught that appears, unrepented of. What shall we think of David's state all this while? Can we imagine that his heart never smote him for it, or that he never lamented it in secret before God? I would willingly hope that he did, and that Nathan was sent to him, immediately upon the birth of the child, when the thing by that means came to be publicly known and talked of, to draw from him an open confession of the sin, to the glory of God, the admonition of others, and that he might receive, by Nathan, absolution with certain limitations. But, during these nine months, we may well suppose his comforts and the exercises of his graces suspended, and his communion with God interrupted; during all that time, it is certain, he penned no psalms, his harp was out of tune, and his soul like a tree in winter, that has life in the root only. Therefore, after Nathan had been with him, he prays, Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and open thou my lips, Psa 51:12, Psa 51:15. Let us observe,
I. The messenger God sent to him. We were told by the last words of the foregoing chapter that the thing David had done displeased the Lord, upon which, one would think, it should have followed that the Lord sent enemies to invade him, terrors to take hold on him, and the messengers of death to arrest him. No, he sent a prophet to him - Nathan, his faithful friend and confidant, to instruct and counsel him, Sa2 12:1. David did not send for Nathan (though he had never had so much occasion as he had now for his confessor), but God sent Nathan to David. Note, Though God may suffer his people to fall into sin, he will not suffer them to lie still in it. He went on frowardly in the way of his heart, and if left to himself, would have wandered endlessly, but (saith God) I have seen his ways, and will heal him, Isa 57:17, Isa 57:18. He sends after us before we seek after him, else we should certainly be lost. Nathan was the prophet by whom God had sent him notice of his kind intentions towards him (Sa2 7:4), and now, by the same hand, he sends him this message of wrath. God's word in the mouth of his ministers must be received, whether it speak terror or comfort. Nathan was obedient to the heavenly vision, and went on God's errand to David. He did not say, "David has sinned, I will not come near him." No; count him not an enemy, but admonish him as a brother, Th2 3:15. He did not say, "David is a king, I dare not reprove him." No; if God sends him, he sets his face like a flint, Isa 50:7.
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II. The message Nathan delivered to him, in order to his conviction.
1. He fetched a compass with a parable, which seemed to David as a complaint made to him by Nathan against one of his subjects that had wronged his poor neighbour, in order to his redressing the injury and punishing the injurious. Nathan, it is likely, used to come to him upon such errands, which made this the less suspected. It becomes those who have interest in princes, and have free access to them, to intercede for those that are wronged, that they may have justice done them. (1.) Nathan represented to David a grievous injury which a rich man had done to an honest neighbour that was not able to contend with him: The rich man had many flocks and herds (Sa2 12:2); the poor man had one lamb only; so unequally is the world divided; and yet infinite wisdom, righteousness, and goodness, make the distribution, that the rich may learn charity and the poor contentment. This poor man had but one lamb, a ewe-lamb, a little ewe-lamb, having not wherewithal to buy or keep more. But it was a cade-lamb (as we call it); it grew up with his children, Sa2 12:3. He was fond of it, and it was familiar with him at all times. The rich man, having occasion for a lamb to entertain a friend with, took the poor man's lamb from him by violence and made use of that (Sa2 12:4), either out of covetousness, because he grudged to make use of his own, or rather out of luxury, because he fancied the lamb that was thus tenderly kept, and ate and drank like a child, must needs be more delicate food than any of his own and have a better relish. (2.) In this he showed him the evil of the sin he had been guilty of in defiling Bath-sheba. He had many wives and concubines, whom he kept at a distance, as rich men keep their flocks in their fields. Had he had but one, and had she been dear to him, as the ewe-lamb was to its owner, had she been dear to him as the loving hind and the pleasant roe, her breasts would have satisfied him at all times, and he would have looked no further, Pro 5:19. Marriage is a remedy against fornication, but marrying many is not; for, when once the law of unity is transgressed, the indulged lust will hardly stint itself. Uriah, like the poor man, had only one wife, who was to him as his own soul, and always lay in his bosom, for he had no other, he desired no other, to lie there. The traveller or wayfaring man was, as bishop Patrick explains it from the Jewish writers, the evil imagination, disposition, or desire, which came into David's heart, which he might have satisfied with some of his own, yet nothing would serve but Uriah's darling. They observe that this evil disposition is called a traveller, for in the beginning it is only so, but, in time, it becomes a guest, and, in conclusion, is master of the house. For he that is called a traveller in the beginning of the verse is called a man (ish - a husband) in the close of it. Yet some observe that in David's breast lust was but as a wayfaring man that tarries only for a night; it did not constantly dwell and rule there. (3.) By this parable he drew from David a sentence against himself. For David supposing it to be a case in fact, and not doubting the truth of it when he had it from Nathan himself, gave judgment immediately against the offender, and confirmed it with an oath, Sa2 12:5, Sa2 12:6. [1.] That, for his injustice in taking away the lamb, he should restore four-fold, according to the law (Exo 22:1), four sheep for a sheep. [2.] That for his tyranny and cruelty, and the pleasure he took in abusing a poor man, he should be put to death. If a poor man steal from a rich man, to satisfy his soul when he is hungry, he shall make restitution, though it cost him all the substance of his house, Pro 6:30, Pro 6:31 (and Solomon there compares the sin of adultery with that, Pro 6:32); but if a rich man steal for stealing sake, not for want but wantonness, merely that he may be imperious and vexatious, he deserves to die for it, for to him the making of restitution is no punishment, or next to none. If the sentence be thought too severe, it must be imputed to the present roughness of David's temper, being under guilt, and not having himself as yet received mercy.
2. He closed in with him, at length, in the application of the parable. In beginning with a parable he showed his prudence, and great need there is of prudence in giving reproofs. It is well managed if, as here, the offender can be brought ere he is aware, to convict and condemn himself. But here, in his application, he shows his faithfulness, and deals as plainly and roundly with king David himself as if he had been a common person. In plain terms, "Thou art the man who hast done this wrong, and a much greater, to thy neighbour; and therefore, by thy own sentence, thou deservest to die, and shalt be judged out of thy own mouth. Did he deserve to die who took his neighbour's lamb? and dost not thou who hast taken thy neighbour's wife? Though he took the lamb, he did not cause the owner thereof to lose his life, as thou hast done, and therefore much more art thou worthy to die." Now he speaks immediately from God, and in his name. He begins with, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, a name sacred and venerable to David, and which commanded his attention. Nathan now speaks, not as a petitioner for a poor man, but as an ambassador from the great God, with whom is no respect of persons.
(1.) God, by Nathan, reminds David of the great things he had done and designed for him, anointing him to be king, and preserving him to the kingdom (Pro 6:7), giving him power over the house and household of his predecessor, and of others that had been his masters, Nabal for one. He had given him the house of Israel and Judah. The wealth of the kingdom was at his service and every body was willing to oblige him. Nay, he was ready to bestow any thing upon him to make him easy: I would have given thee such and such things, Pro 6:8. See how liberal God is in his gifts; we are not straitened in him. Where he has given much, yet he gives more. And God's bounty to us is a great aggravation of our discontent and desire of forbidden fruit. It is ungrateful to covet what God has prohibited, while we have liberty to pray for what God has promised, and that is enough.
(2.) He charges him with a high contempt of the divine authority, in the sins he had been guilty of: Wherefore hast thou (presuming upon thy royal dignity and power) despised the commandment of the Lord? Pro 6:9. This is the spring and this is the malignity of sin, that it is making light of the divine law and the law-maker; as if the obligation of it were weak, the precepts of it trifling, and the threats not at all formidable. Though no man ever wrote more honourably of the law of God than David did, yet, in this instance, he is justly charged with a contempt of it. His adultery with Bath-sheba, which began the mischief, is not mentioned, perhaps because he was already convinced of that, but, [1.] The murder of Uriah is twice mentioned: "Thou hast killed Uriah with the sword, though not with thy sword, yet, which is equally heinous, with thy pen, by ordering him to be set in the forefront of the battle." Those that contrive wickedness and command it are as truly guilty of it as those that execute it. It is repeated with an aggravation: Thou hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon, those uncircumcised enemies of God and Israel. [2.] The marrying of Bath-sheba is likewise twice mentioned, because he thought there was no harm in that (Pro 6:9): Thou hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and again, Pro 6:10. To marry her whom he had before defiled, and whose husband he had slain, was an affront upon the ordinance of marriage, making that not only to palliate, but in a manner to consecrate, such villanies. In all this he despised the word of the Lord (so it is in the Hebrew), not only his commandment in general which forbade such things, but the particular word of promise which God had, by Nathan, sent to him some time before, that he would build him a house. If he had had a due value and veneration for this sacred promise, he would not thus have polluted his house with lust and blood.
(3.) He threatens an entail of judgements upon his family for this sin (Pro 6:10): "The sword shall never depart from thy house, not in thy time nor afterwards, but, for the most part, thou and thy posterity shall be engaged in war." Or it points at the slaughters that should be among his children, Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah, all falling by the sword. God had promised that his mercy should not depart from him and his house (Pro 7:15), yet here threatens that the sword should not depart. Can the mercy and the sword consist with each other? Yes, those may lie under great and long afflictions who yet shall not be excluded from the grace of the covenant. The reason given is, Because thou hast despised me. Note, Those who despise the word and law of God despise God himself and shall be lightly esteemed. It is particularly threatened, [1.] That his children should be his grief: I will raise up evil against thee out of thy own house. Sin brings trouble into a family, and one sin is often made the punishment of another. [2.] That his wives should be his shame, that by an unparalleled piece of villany they should be publicly debauched before all Israel, Pro 6:11, Pro 6:12. It is not said that this should be done by his own son, lest the accomplishment should have been hindered by the prediction being too plain; but it was done by Absalom, at the counsel of Ahithophel, Pro 16:21, Pro 16:22. He that defiled his neighbour's wife should have his own defiled, for thus that sin used to be punished, as appears by Job's imprecation, Job 31:10, Then let my wife grind unto another, and that threatening, Hos 4:14. The sin was secret, and industriously concealed, but the punishment should be open, and industriously proclaimed, to the shame of David, whose sin in the matter of Uriah, though committed many years before, would then be called to mind and commonly talked of upon that occasion. As face answers to face in a glass, so does the punishment often answer to the sin; here is blood for blood and uncleanness for uncleanness. And thus God would show how much he hates sin, even in his own people, and that, wherever he find it, he will not let it go unpunished.
3. David's penitent confession of his sin hereupon. He says not a word to excuse himself or extenuate his sin, but freely owns it: I have sinned against the Lord, Sa2 12:13. It is probable that he said more to this purport; but this is enough to show that he was truly humbled by what Nathan said, and submitted to the conviction. He owns his guilt - I have sinned, and aggravates it - It was against the Lord: on this string he harps in the psalm he penned on this occasion. Psa 51:1, Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.
4. His pardon declared, upon this penitent confession, but with a proviso. When David said I have sinned, and Nathan perceived that he was a true penitent,
(1.) He did, in God's name, assure him that his sin was forgiven: "The Lord also has put away thy sin out of the sight of his avenging eye; thou shalt not die," that is, "not die eternally, nor be for ever put away from God, as thou wouldest have been if he had not put away the sin." The obligation to punishment is hereby cancelled and vacated. He shall not come into condemnation: that is the nature of forgiveness. "Thy iniquity shall not be thy everlasting ruin. The sword shall not depart from thy house, but, [1.] It shall not cut thee off, thou shalt come to thy grave in peace." David deserved to die as an adulterer and murderer, but God would not cut him off as he might justly have done. [2.] "Though thou shalt all thy days be chastened of the Lord, yet thou shalt not be condemned with the world." See how ready God is to forgive sin. To this instance, perhaps, David refers, Psa 32:5, I said, I will confess, and thou forgavest. Let not great sinners despair of finding mercy with God if they truly repent; for who is a God like unto him, pardoning iniquity?
(2.) Yet he pronounces a sentence of death upon the child, Sa2 12:14. Behold the sovereignty of God! The guilty parent lives, and the guiltless infant dies; but all souls are his, and he may, in what way he pleases, glorify himself in his creatures. [1.] David had, by his sin, wronged God in his honour; he had given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. The wicked people of that generation, the infidels, idolaters, and profane, would triumph in David's fall, and speak ill of God and of his law, when they saw one guilty of such foul enormities that professed such an honour both for him and it. "These are your professors! This is he that prays and sings psalms, and is so very devout! What good can there be in such exercises, if they will not restrain men from adultery and murder?" They would say, "Was not Saul rejected for a less matter? why then must David live and reign still?" not considering that God sees not as man sees, but searches the heart. To this day there are those who reproach God, and are hardened in sin, through the example of David. Now, though it is true that none have any just reason to speak ill of God, or of his word and ways, for David's sake, and it is their sin that do so, yet he shall be reckoned with that laid the stumbling-block in their way, and gave, though not cause, yet colour, for the reproach. Note, There is this great evil in the scandalous sins of those that profess religion, and relation to God, that they furnish the enemies of God and religion with matter for reproach and blasphemy, Rom 2:24. [2.] God will therefore vindicate his honour by showing his displeasure against David for this sin, and letting the world see that though he loves David he hates his sin; and he chooses to do it by the death of the child. The landlord may distrain on any part of the premises where he pleases. Perhaps the diseases and deaths of infants were not so common in those days as they are now, which might make this, as an unusual thing, the more evident token of God's displeasure; according to the word he had often said, that he would visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–9 And the Lord sent Nathan unto David,.... Quickly after…
And the Lord sent Nathan unto David,.... Quickly after the child was born begotten on Bathsheba, and when it was known and became the public talk of people, and the enemies of religion were full of it, and blasphemed on account of it, Sa2 12:14; so that David was nine months or more without any true sense of his sin, his heart hardened, his graces dormant, the joys of salvation taken from him, and he without any communion with God, and having little concern about it; though perhaps he might have some pangs at times, which quickly went off; though some think he exercised repentance in a private way before; acknowledged his sin to the Lord, and had a sense of pardon, and before this time penned the thirty second and the hundred thirtieth psalms on this occasion, Psa 32:1; but Nathan is sent to awaken and arouse him, to express a sense of his sin, and repentance for it in public, which he did by penning and publishing the fifty first psalm after Nathan had been with him, Psa 51:1; for though the Lord may leave his people to fall into sin, and suffer them to continue therein some time, yet not always; they shall rise again through the assistance of his Spirit and grace, in the acts of repentance and faith, both in private and public:
and he came unto him, and said unto him: he came as if he had a case to lay before him, and to have justice done, and he told the story as if it was a real fact, and so David understood it:
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there were two men in one city: pointing at David and Uriah, who both lived in Jerusalem:
the one rich and the other poor; David the rich man, king over all Israel; Uriah a subject, an officer in his army, comparatively poor.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9 Nathan delivers and applies his parable, ver. 1-12. David…
Nathan delivers and applies his parable, ver. 1-12. David repents and is forgiven, but punished, ver. 13. 14. The sickness and death of the child, with David's behaviour on the occasion, ver. 15-23. The birth of Solomon, ver. 24-25. The taking of Rabbah, ver. 26-31.
The Lord sent - When the ordinary means did not awaken David to repentance, God takes an extraordinary course. Thus the merciful God pities and prevents him who had so horribly forsaken God. He said - He prudently ushers in his reproof with a parable, after the manner of the eastern nations, that so he might surprize David, and cause him unawares to give sentence against himself.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9 The Lord sends Nathan the prophet to reprove David;…
CHAPTER XII
The Lord sends Nathan the prophet to reprove David; which he
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does by means of a curious parable, 1-4.
David is led, unknowingly, to pronounce his on condemnation,
5, 6.
Nathan charges the guilt home on his conscience; and predicts
a long train of calamities which should fall on him and his
family, 7-12.
David confesses his sin; and Nathan gives him hope of God's
mercy, and foretells the death of the child born in adultery,
13, 14.
The child is taken ill; David fasts and prays for its
restoration, 15-17.
On the seventh day the child dies, and David is comforted,
18-24.
Solomon is born of Bath-sheba, 25, 26.
Joab besieges Rabbah of the Ammonites, takes the city of waters,
and sends for David to take Rabbah, 27, 28.
He comes, takes it, gets much spoil, and puts the inhabitants to
hard labor, 29-31.
NOTES ON CHAP. XII
Verse 1. There were two men in one city] See a discourse on fables at the end of Jdg 9:56, and a discourse on parabolic writing at the end of the thirteenth chapter of Matthew.
There is nothing in this parable that requires illustration; its bent is evident; and it was construed to make David, unwittingly, pass sentence on himself. It was in David's hand, what his own letters were in the hands of the brave but unfortunate Uriah.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 2Sa 12:1. The Lord sent Nathan unto David —…
2Sa 12:1. The Lord sent Nathan unto David — When the ordinary means did not awaken David to repentance, God takes an extraordinary course. Thus the merciful Lord pities and prevents him who had so horribly forsaken God. He said — He prudently ushers in his reproof with a parable, after the manner of the eastern nations, that so he might surprise David, and cause him unawares to give sentence against himself.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 8 Nathan came to David as if to ask his…
Nathan came to David as if to ask his judicial decision on the case about to be submitted to him (compare 2Sa 14:2-11; 1Ki 20:35-41). The circumstances of the story are exquisitely contrived to heighten the pity of David for the oppressed, and his indignation against the oppressor 1Sa 25:13, 1Sa 25:22.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 Unto him, after the birth of the child. A…
Unto him, after the birth of the child. A whole year had nearly elapsed, and David continued blind and impenitent. The spirit of prophecy had left him; and, though he was clear-sighted, and equitable enough to punish the faults of others, he could not discern his own picture, till Nathan had removed the veil. The prophet acted with the utmost prudence, and did not condemn the king till he had pronounced sentence on himself. It is commonly supposed that the interview was private. St. Chrysostom believes that the chief lords of the court were present; which would enhance the discretion of Nathan, as well as David’s humility. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 2. Nathan’s Exhortation to Repentance. David’s Repentance. Conquest of…
2. Nathan’s Exhortation to Repentance. David’s Repentance. Conquest of Rabbah and Punishment of the Ammonites
2Sa_12:1-31
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1And1 the Lord [Jehovah] sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other 2, 3poor.2 The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds. But [And] the poor3 man had nothing save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up; and it grew up together with him and with his children; it did eat of his own meat [food], and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter. 4And there came a traveller unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but [and] took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him. 5And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, and he said unto Nathan, As the Lord [Jehovah] liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die; 6And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.
7And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the Lord [Jehovah] God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; 8And I gave thee thy master’s house,4 and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house4 of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover [further] have given unto thee such and such things. 9Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord [Jehovah], to do evil in his5 sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. 10Now,6 therefore [And now] the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. 11Thus saith the Lord [Jehovah], Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor,7 and he shall lie with thy wives in the light of this sun. 12For thou didst it secretly;8 but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.
13And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord [Jehovah]. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord [Jehovah] also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die. 14Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies9 of the Lord [Jehovah] to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die. 15And Nathan departed [went] unto his house
And the Lord [Jehovah] struck the child that Uriah’s wife bare unto David, 16and it was very sick. David therefore [And David] besought God for the child; and David fasted, and went in and lay all night upon the earth [ground]. 17And the elders of his house arose and went to him, to raise him up from the earth 18[ground]; but he would not, neither did he eat bread with them. And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died. And the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead; for they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he would not hearken unto our voice; how will he then vex himself, if we tell him that the child is dead? [and how shall we say to him, The child is dead? he will then act badly.] 19But when David [And David] saw that his servants whispered, [ins. and] David perceived that the child was 20dead; therefore [and] David said unto his servants, Is the child dead? And they said, He is dead. Then [And] David arose from the earth [ground], and washed and anointed himself, and changed his apparel, and came into the house of the Lord [Jehovah] and worshipped; then he [and] came to his own house, and when he required [and asked], [ins. and] they set bread before him, and he did eat. 21Then said his servants [And his servants said] unto him, What thing is this that thou hast done? thou didst fast and weep for the child while it was alive; but 22[and] when the child was dead, thou didst rise and eat bread. And he said, While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may [shall] live? 23But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. 24And David comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her; and she bare a son, and he called his name Solomon; and the Lord [Jehovah] loved him. 25And he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet; and he called his name Jedidiah, because of the Lord [Jehovah].
26And Joab fought against Rabbah of the children of Ammon, and took the royal city. 27And Joab sent messengers to David, and said, I have fought against Rabbah, 28and have taken the city of waters. Now, therefore [And now] gather the rest of the people together, and encamp against the city and take it, lest I take the city, and it be called after my name. 29And David gathered all the people together, and went to Rabbah, and fought against it and took it. 30And he took their king’s crown from off his head, the weight whereof [and its weight] was a talent of gold with the [and] precious stones; and it was set on David’s head. 31And he brought forth the spoil of the city in great abundance. And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put10 them under saws and under harrows [threshing-sledges] of iron and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln;11 and thus he did unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. So [And] David and all the people returned unto Jerusalem.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1. 2Sa_12:1-12. Nathan’s exhortation to repentance.
2Sa_12:1. And the Lordsent.—Nathan received his commission to David as prophet; as the Septuagint., Syr., Arab. and some MSS., rightly indicate by the addition of the explanatory phrase “the prophet” [after “Nathan”]. After the words “said unto him” the Vulgate adds “give me your opinion” (responde mihi judicium), a gloss, probably occasioned by the fact that Nathan’s discourse begins immediately with a parallel.12—David is caught beforehand in the cleverly spread net of the prophet’s parable.
2Sa_12:3. The poor man had “nothing at all” but one lamb, which he “kept alive,” supported, reared. It was not a pet-lamb (Keil), since the man had absolutely no other possession in cattle. As a poor man he had the means of buying only one little lamb, which he was now raising, and which he loved the more as it was his only property. [Bib.-Com.: All these circumstances are exquisitely contrived to heighten the pity and indignation of the hearer.—Tr.].
2Sa_12:4.13 [The three designations “traveller,” “wayfarer,” “the man that came to him,” are rhetorical variations and mean the same thing substantially, though the last is obviously specially appropriate in its place. Some of the rabbis and the fathers (quoted with apparent approval by Wordsworth) make the three names set forth lust in its different stages of growth, as a passer-by, as a guest, as a permanent inmate; of course this allegorizing is out of place here.—Tr.].
2Sa_12:5 sqq. Nathan so told his story that David must needs believe it referred to a deed of violence to be immediately punished, not supposing at all that it concerned him.14 Hence his violent indignation. The fourfold compensation for a stolen sheep was a legal provision, Ex. 21:37. The sevenfold of the Sept. is to be explained by the fact that the number seven was so common among the Hebrews. Comp. Pro_6:31. [The Chald. says fortyfold, either by clerical error, or in a mere spirit of exaggeration. This variation may suggest the uncertainty of Böttcher’s view, that the Heb. text here has the priestly recension (according to the law in Exodus) and the Greek the laic recension. Nor is there any ground for the assertion of Thenius (and Wellhausen) that David was certainly here not thinking of the law in Exodus, and that the Greek text is the original. Though the Book of Exodus in its present shape may not have existed in David’s time, there is no reason why this law should not have been known.—Tr.].
2Sa_12:7. Thou art the man.—The farther David was from thinking of a reference to himself, the greater the force with which this word must have struck him. The account here given of the firmness and wisdom with which Nathan approached the king is “inimitably admirable” (Ewald). The Sept. and Vulg. [not the common Vulg. text,—Tr.], have: “thou art the man that has done this,” a mere explanatory addition. Thus saith the Lord the God of Israel.—The following words, as far as 2Sa_12:9, bring out most clearly the greatness of David’s guilt in various points: 1) from the point of view of his royal office; his crime is most sharply opposed to his divine induction thereinto; 2) his deliverance from Saul was a gracious act of God, for which he has here shown himself in the highest degree ungrateful; 3) David might unblamed have taken his predecessor’s wives (Thenius); this is the only meaning to be attached to the words: “I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom.” [Bp. Patrick and others give the later Jewish understanding of the law or custom: the king and no other person fell heir to the property and harem of his predecessor, but it did not follow that he actually married the inmates of the harem; they might be merely a part of his establishment. If it was a son that succeeded his father, he treated these women with reverence; if no blood-relationship existed between the two kings, the successor might actually take the women as his wives (Philippson). As to the morality of the act, it was a natural result of a polygamous system, and morally in the same category with it; and polygamy was allowed by the Mosaic Law.—Tr.]. According to 1Sa_14:50 Saul had only one wife, and according to 2Sa_3:7 only one concubine who fell into Abner’s hands. 4) David, as king, had control of all Israel (1Sa_8:16), and might have increased his establishment from their daughters, without committing this crime. And I have given thee the house of Israel; instead of “house” Syr. and Arab. read “daughters,” for which change, according to the above explanation, there is no need. 5) David despised, transgressed the “word,” that is, the law of God by slaying Uriah. The Heb. text has: “in his eyes,” the margin: “in my eyes;” the difference is insignificant.15 This crime is heightened, however, by the fact that he committed the murder by “the sword of the children of Ammon.” With this added statement and the use of the stronger word “murder” [Eng. A. V. slain] instead of “slay,” the fact already mentioned is repeated, in order that the culmination of the iniquity, the using the enemies of God’s people as its instrument, may come forth more sharply.
2Sa_12:10-12. Threat of punishment, David’s misdeed being again characterized as a factual contempt of the Lord. Instead of: “Thou hast despised the word of the Lord,” it is here said: “Thou hast despised Me.” For in His word the Lord Himself reveals Himself. For this reason, because David is guilty of despising the Lord, 1) “the sword shall not depart from his house forever,” that is, as long as the house or posterity of David shall last. From the seed of this evil deed of David sprang the poisonous fruit of the evil deeds of his sons and the consequent domestic and fraternal war. The bloody sword appears in the murder of the incestuous Amnon by Absalom (2Sa_13:28-29), in the death of the rebel Absalom (13, 14), and in the execution of Adonijah (1Ki_2:24-25). Thereby is Uriah’s murder punished; 2) David is threatened with disgrace through the disgrace of his wives. To thy neighbor. … in the sight of the sun—before all Israel. For the fulfilment by Absalom, see 2Sa_16:22, and comp. 1Ki_2:23 sq., where Adonijah asks for Abishag the Shunammite. [On the text in 2Sa_12:9-10 see “Text, and Gram.”—Tr.]
2Sa_12:13-23. David’s penitent confession and punishment by the death of the child of Bathsheba.
2Sa_12:13. I have sinned against the Lord.—This frank, short, honest confession of sin was made not some time after this discourse of Nathan, but immediately as its direct result. The power of the prophetic word laid hold of the depths of his heart and conscience; the divine truth, which inexorably laid bare his sin, put an end to all self-deception and all anxious effort to cover up and palliate his transgression of the divine word. He confesses his sin as a sin against the Lord, to show that he clearly recognizes it to be, what it essentially is, a contradiction of God’s holy will. Nathan’s answer is the announcement of the Lord’s grace 1) in forgiving the sin: The Lord will cause [or, has caused—Tr.] thy sin to pass over, that is, it is not to remain before him, but to vanish, be forgiven; 2) in remitting the deserved punishment: Thou shalt not die!—As adulterer and homicide David had deserved death; but this just punishment was not executed, because he honestly repented and did not harden his heart against the Lord. [Probably the civil law in such a case could not have been enforced against an absolute king by human authority; but God could have found means to execute it. Clearly it is physical death that is here meant, not the death of the soul (against Wordsworth and Bib.-Com.).—In the Mosaic code there is no provision against such a marriage as that of David and Bathsheba; on general moral grounds it would have been pronounced wrong. Yet there were also reasons why the marriage should take place, and God Himself solves the ethical question by the mouth of His prophet, not increasing the evil by sundering the marriage tie, but so chastising the sinners that one of them at least must have remembered the lesson to the end of his life.—According to the later Jewish law the marriage was illegal; and some Jewish writers have tried hard to clear David of the charge of adultery. See Patrick’s Comm., 2Sa_11:27; 2Sa_11:4.—Tr.].—This is not inconsistent with the threat of punishment in 2Sa_12:14, the fulfilment of which is specially founded on the provocation to blasphemy given to the heathen. Only because thou hast made the enemies of the Lord to despise16 (him). The enemies of the people of Israel were also enemies of the Lord and of the king of this people. Towards the heathen Israel’s duty was, by obedience to God’s word and commands, to set forth the theocracy and bring it to honor and recognition. Transgression of God’s command by the king himself must lead the heathen to heap shame and reproach on Israel and its God; and there must therefore be expiation by punishment. David and Bathsheba must lose their adulterously begotten child, and this should be a sign to the Lord’s enemies of the severe justice of the God of Israel. “The child also, etc.;” the statement is introduced by the word also as in keeping with what precedes (גַּם, not howbeit, but also).
2Sa_12:15. The Lord smote the child.—The fulfilment followed immediately on the prediction. The sickness is represented as a punishment inflicted by God; therefore is added: which the wife of Uriah had borne to David.—[It was, then, apparently not till after the birth of the child that Nathan came to David; the latter had remained many months seemingly unconscious of his sin.—Tr.].
2Sa_12:16. David acknowledges the punishing hand of the Lord. He goes away to a retired spot, to collect himself and pour out his heart before God. The phrase “went in” refers to his going not to the Sanctuary (to which he does not go till 2Sa_12:20), but to a quiet room in his house, where he could be alone; Vulg.: ingressus seorsum [“he went in apart”].
2Sa_12:17. The elders of his house are its oldest and most trusted servants. Comp. Gen_24:2; Gen_50:7. So Clericus. Whether David’s uncles and oldest brothers are thereby meant (Ewald) must remain undecided.
2Sa_12:18. The elders hesitate to tell David of the death of the child, lest he be plunged into deeper grief, or do himself a harm. Vulg.: “how much more will he afflict himself?” [David’s affection for this child is remarkable. He was a “great lover of his children” (Patrick) and perhaps specially attached to this one by reason of his love for its mother.—Tr.].
2Sa_12:19 sqq. David’s conduct is the opposite of what the servants expected. The solution of their perplexity lay in the fact that David had hitherto prayed for the child’s life, but now bowed humbly beneath God’s hand, and thus gains strength joyfully to bear the burden laid on him. David’s two courses of conduct in immediate juxtaposition have one common source within him; namely, humble, unconditional devotion of heart to the will of the Lord. After “and he asked” [2Sa_12:20] “bread” is omitted, because it is mentioned immediately afterwards. The shorter phrase is obviously original; the addition of the Sept.: “bread to eat,” is an interpretation.
2Sa_12:21. Render: “thou didst fast and weep for (בֵּעֲבוּר) the child, while it yet lived” [= for the child living—Tr.]; so Vulg., Cler., Ew. § 341 b [Sept., Eng. A. V.]; not “while the child lived” (Ges., De Wette, Maur., Keil [Chald., Syr., Luther]), since as conjunction the word denotes only either the ground or the end.17
2Sa_12:22. See on 2Sa_12:19 sqq. David had continued to hope that the Lord would hear his prayer18 and spare the child.
2Sa_12:23. The continued existence of the child’s soul in Sheol is here assumed, and the hope of reunion with it expressed. “Nothing is said, indeed, of conscious existence, but this must have been supposed, in order to find consolation and repose in going to the dead” (Böttch., de inferis, § 109 sq.).
2Sa_12:24-25. Birth of Solomon. David comforted Bathsheba, because he himself had received comfort. The Sept. prefixes “she conceived” to our appropriately curt text “she bare a son.” And he called his name Solomon.19 Solomon’s birth is mentioned here because of its factual connection with what precedes. The name Solomon, like the similar names in Lev_24:11; Num_34:27; 1Ch_26:25 sq., was “an old and common one … it is therefore wholly without foundation to say that Solomon first received this name from the ‘peace’ of his time” (Ew., Gesch. [Hist. of Israel] III. p. 228, Rem. 1). It is probable, indeed, that Solomon’s birth occurred just after the conquest of Rabbah related below; for, as Bathsheba’s first son was conceived during the siege, this siege, if Solomon was born before its termination, would have lasted about two years [Cler., Thenius]. Nevertheless the name Solomon is to be explained not from the peace gained by the Ammonite war, but (after 1Ch_22:9) from the wish that peace might be allotted him as a gift of God, in contrast with the continual wars of his father’s life. And the Lord loved him.—Here instead of David, the Lord appears as subject; and so in the verb “sent” [2Sa_12:25] the Lord is subject, not David, since the latter had already given the name Solomon. Ewald renders: “he (David) asked through Nathan from the oracle a loftier name for his new-born son;” but this rests on the inappropriate conception of the words “Jehovah loved him” as referring to the maintenance of this child’s life [in contrast with the dead child—Tr.], apart from the fact that the subject “Jehovah” is again arbitrarily changed. This last consideration is also against the rendering: “and he (David) gave him into the hand of Nathan the prophet (to bring up),” where the Piel of the verb would be required. The expression in the text (Qal with בְּיַד [to send by the hand of]) means to give a commission (comp. Exo_4:13). Jehovah sent Nathan to David with the commission to give the child the name Jedidiah. Nathan is expressly called prophet, because he appeared in divine commission as such. This was the factual opposite of the former message [2Sa_12:1], God’s declaration that He had bestowed His grace and mercy on David and his child. The subject of the verb “called” is Nathan. “On account of Jehovah,” that is, because Jehovah loved him, as the name signified (= “beloved of Jehovah,” Germ. Gottlieb.)20 While Solomon was the name given him by his parents, by which he was to be called, Jedidiah, as the high name given him by the prophet, denoted the Lord’s love and faithfulness bestowed on him whose light was to illumine his whole life. [Böttcher, Thenius and Wellhausen insist on rendering 2Sa_12:25 : “and he committed him to the care of Nathan,” etc., which agrees, says Thenius, with the general opinion (of which, however, there is not a word in the Bible) that Nathan was Solomon’s tutor. This is also the view of Victorinus Strigelius quoted by Patrick, and is certainly more in keeping with the context than the other. If the view of Eng. A. V. and Erdmann be correct we should expect some additional explanatory phrase; unless the next sentence is such a complementary phrase, in which case the subject of “called” must be the same as that of “sent,” namely Jehovah. But, as Erdmann himself points out, the subject of “called” is not Jehovah, but either Nathan or David. For this reason it seems better to take David also as subject of “sent” or delivered.” David committed him (reading the Piel) to Nathan, and Nathan gave him his higher name. Comp. similar second names in the histories of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Simon Peter.—Then. remarks of this whole narrative that its exact fidelity to nature and touching simplicity, when we recollect that the scenes passed in the interior of the palace, show that it must have been communicated by a contemporary.—Tr.]
2Sa_12:26-31. Conquest of Rabbah and cruel punishment of the Ammonites. Comp. 1Ch_20:1-3.
2Sa_12:26 sqq. The narrative returns to 2Sa_11:1. From the connection the “city of the kingdom,”21 the capital of the kingdom, is the whole city, not merely the water-town (2Sa_12:27) “excluding the acropolis” (Keil). Joab, as commanding general, conducting the siege, conquered the whole city; and this result is here summarily stated in advance. [But this statement does not read like an anticipative summary; the capture of 2Sa_12:29 seems to be different from that of 2Sa_12:26.—Tr.].
2Sa_12:27 sq. Detailed account of the affair, especially how Joab, after taking the water-city, summoned the king, who had remained in Jerusalem (2Sa_11:1), in order that the remaining higher part of the city might be taken under his direction to the honor of the royal name. And so it happened, though it was none the less true (2Sa_12:26) that Joab was the real conqueror. Vulg.: “lest, the city being taken by me, the victory should be ascribed to my name.” Luther: “that I may not have the name of it.”—To judge from the ruins of Ammon (comp. Ritter XV., p. 1145 sq.) the capital-city of the Ammonites lay on both banks of the Upper Jabbok, in a narrow valley, on the north side of which on an eminence was the citadel (“the city” 2Sa_12:28) towering above the whole lower city (“the water-city”). This citadel was not taken by Joab till David came, in order that the completion of the conquest might appear as the deed of the king himself. See Curt. 6, 6 (quoted by Grotius): “he (Craterus), after everything was prepared, awaited the coming of the king (Alexander), yielding to him, as was proper, the honor of the capture of the city.”—[Eng. A. V. has: “and it be called after my name.” As there seems to be no example of a conquered city’s being called after the name of the conqueror, it may be better to render (with Erdmann and others): “and my name be called (or honored) upon (in respect to) it.” However, the ordinary meaning of the phrase is as in Eng. A. V.—Joab’s conduct here is either that of a devoted servant, wishing to give his master honor or shield him from popular disfavor (on account of the affair of Bathsheba), or that of an adroit courtier, who will not run the risk of exciting his king’s envy by too much success (see 1Sa_18:6-8).—Tr.].
2Sa_12:29. All the people, the soldiers that had remained at home; the besieging force had to be strengthened in order to conquer the strong Upper City.
2Sa_12:30. When the citadel was taken, the king of the Ammonites was either killed or captured. David took the crown from his head, and set it on his own, in order to represent himself as lord of the Ammonite kingdom. The kikkar [talent] was 3000 shekels (comp. Winer, s. v. Gewichte); the weight of the crown was 83½ [Dresden] pounds [= about 100 English pounds, for the silver talent, which was probably the current unit of weight; the gold-talent weighed twice as much.—Tr.]. This heavy crown of gold and precious stones might have been worn during the short time of coronation by a strong man like David. In many places now weights scarcely less heavy are borne on the head even by women. We need not, therefore, suppose that the weight is here accidentally exaggerated (Keil), nor that the crown was supported on the throne above the head (Clericus). [Some would understand that the value, and not the weight of the crown is here given; but the text-word can mean nothing but “weight.” The Sept. has: “he took the crown of Molchom their king from his head.” This reading Molkom or Milkom instead of “their king” is adopted by Geiger (p. 306), who sees in our Hebrew text an illustration of the tendency to get rid of the names of idol deities. As our text stands the suffix “their” is strange, since the Ammonites are not mentioned immediately before (Wellh.), and we might also expect here the mention of the Ammonite king by name (Bib.-Comm.). We may therefore render: “he took Malcom’s (Moloch’s) crown from his head.”—Tr.].
2Sa_12:31. The cruel punishments inflicted by David on the Ammonites were probably the same that they were accustomed to inflict on the Israelites or other nations in war. For their cruelties see 1Sa_11:2 and Amo_1:8. As they did, so it was done to them. Instead of “he put them under saws, etc.” we must read: “he cut them with saws, etc.,” as in Chron. and the Targum (שׂוּר instead of שׂום); our present text can only be rendered: “he put them into saws,” etc., a phrase that cannot be applied to the saw. Comp. Heb_11:37, and Sueton. Caligula 2Sa 27: “he cut them in two with the saw.” And with cutting instruments [Eng. A. V. axes] of iron. Instead of this 1Ch_20:3 has “saws” a second time, a clerical error22 for “axes” [Eng. A. V. corrects the error, and renders “axes.”—Tr.].—In the next clause the Qeri, Sept. and Vulg. [and Eng. A. V.] read: “made them pass through the brick-kiln,”23 that is, burned them in brick-kilns (Keil). But the text is to be retained with Kimchi, whose explanation is essentially correct: “he passed them through Malchan, i.e., the place where the Ammonites burned their sons to their idol.” Instead of malkan (from מֹלֶך = Moloch) we may with Bött. pronounce the word milkon=milkom.24 Both denote the image of Moloch (comp. 1Ki_11:5; 1Ki_11:33). In the burning image human sacrifices were offered to Moloch, and “to cause to pass through (or, through the fire) to Moloch” is the usual phrase for this idol-service 25 (see Lev_18:21; 2Ki_23:10; Jer_32:35; Eze_20:31). “The design was to inflict a striking punishment on idolatry, and in so far the war was a holy one” (Then.). The milder explanation of the punishment as consisting in the imposition of severe labors, cutting wood, burning bricks, etc. (Danz and others) is inconsistent with the words of the text. However, the text does not require us to suppose that all the inhabitants of Rabbah were thus treated; it was probably only the soldiers that were in the Upper City [“and so he did to all the cities of the Ammonites.”—Tr.].
By this Ammonite war (probably the last that he waged) David had extended and strengthened his kingdom toward the whole east. By all his wars (Chron. 8. sqq.) the boundaries of his kingdom were so far extended that it was secure against heathen nations. But this splendor of outward power and dominion stood in sharp contrast with the inward disintegration of the royal house and of the whole people through David’s sin.
HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL
1. David’s condition of soul in the time from his fall to his repentance may be understood from the fact that it needed such a strong impulse as Nathan’s discourse to bring him to repentance, while on the other hand the word of confession followed immediately on the discourse. This latter indicates that his conscience had accused him of sin; but frank confession had been somehow hindered, till the hindrance was set aside by Nathan’s word. The confession was preceded by a silence, which did not proceed from a contrite heart, but concealed an unquiet conscience and distracted heart. Thenius rightly says: “Psalms 32 describes what David felt before he was led to confession of sin by Nathan’s address.” The expression (2Sa_12:3-4): “for I kept silence; my bones wasted away in my crying all the day; for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me,” sets forth how his silence was accompanied by consuming anguish of body and soul, wherein he felt in his conscience the oppressive burden of God’s punitive righteousness, without being thereby moved to confession of sin. “We see plainly from Psalms 32 what bitter inward struggles he endured before he yielded to the divine chastisement and grew strong enough to confess his sins openly before God” (Ewald). These inward conflicts were produced by two factors: (1) the constant “weight of God’s hand on him”—the accusing, condemning voice of conscience, the inward completion of the divine judgment; (2) his impenitent, uncontrite heart (which was the cause of his silence), which wished to “maintain its rights” by self-excuse and self-justification against the inevitable divine judgment (comp. Psa_51:6). This was “the guile in his spirit” (2Sa_12:2), which was the ground of his silence (“for,” 2Sa_12:3). He was not upright in heart (2Sa_12:11), so that he did not honestly confess his sins, but concealed them (comp. 2Sa_12:5). Thus Psalms 32. fills out our picture of David’s condition and conduct after his sin and after Nathan’s piercing punitory discourse. Against the reference of this Psalm to the crime of David against Bathsheba it has been alleged (De Wette, Stier, Clauss, Hitzig) that in it the confession comes from inward pain of conscience, while in 2 Samuel 12 it is occasioned by Nathan’s discourse. The two facts, however, are not mutually exclusive, but mutually complementary. Nathan’s discourse is not the ground, but the occasion of David’s confession. See Hengstenberg on Psalms 32 for the particular points in which the Psalm and the history correspond to one another.
2. The deceit of the impenitent heart consists in its seeking to excuse and justify itself despite the condemnation of conscience, while it yet obtains no relief from the feeling of guilt, rather brings about a sharper reaction of conscience, and increases the pains that come from the conflict of mutually accusing and excusing thoughts. Sin is not gotten rid of by failure to acknowledge it; it rests all the more heavily on the conscience, and the closer the mouth that ought to confess is shut, the clearer sounds out the accusing, judging voice of conscience. “The roots of this deceit (which appears immediately after the Fall of man) are pride, lack of trust in God, and love of sin. Many are thereby kept altogether from confession of sin, in Pelagian self-blinding take delight in their wretchedness, and think themselves most excellent. In others are seen the beginnings of true confession; but they do not obtain the goal, because guile prevents them from acknowledging the whole extent of their harm. And even they that have really come into a gracious state, greatly embitter by guile the blessing of the forgiveness, that they have attained through sincerity. What especially exposes them to this temptation is their strict view of sin and of its condemnableness before God and the consciousness of the grace received from God and of their situation. Nature struggles vigorously against the deep humiliation which (especially for them) recognition and confession of sin carries with it. It is therefore necessary that they lay deeply to heart David’s word (2Sa_12:1-2), spoken out of painful experience of the misery of guile: happy is he whose transgression is removed, etc.” (Hengst.). But it is a quality of the deceit of the impenitent heart to apply God’s word, the mirror of sin, to others rather than to itself, and thus to put away self-examination and self-knowledge in its light.
3. The grace of God does not suffer man to go on unwarned in the path of sin, but leads him to recognition and confession of sin, and to an humble bowing under the mighty hand that must smite him for his sin. The divine grace herein employs human instruments like Nathan; and the only effective means in this case of bringing men to confession is the word of God, which 1) shows them sin in its true form, in unadorned full reality, in all its baseness and shockingness (comp. 2Sa_12:1-6); 2) points out the fulness of the divine benefits that should have kept them from sin, in the presence of which sin appears as sheer ingratitude (2Sa_12:7-8); 3) presses home the demands of God’s holy will in His word and law (2Sa_12:9); and 4) exhibits the inevitable results of sin as the sign of the divine retributive righteousness, under which man must bow.—When a man quietly opens his heart, as David did, to this ministry of grace (that leads to penitence), then appears its purposed working: 1) deep, penitent recognition of sin, not merely as an offence against man, but as enmity “against the Lord Himself,” so that there is an end to the blindness about the nature of sin, founded on self-love; 2) sincere, frank confession of sin as an offence against the holy God, so that now ceases the inward conflict of opposing accusations and excuses, of a condemning conscience and a pride founded on self-justifying self-love. Open confession of sin was a legal part of the sin-offering, Lev_5:5; Lev_16:21; Num_5:7.—“I have sinned against the Lord. The words are very few, as with the publican in Luk_18:13. But just that is a good sign of a truly broken heart; here is no excusing, no shrouding, no belittling of sin; no hiding-place is sought; no pretext used, no human weakness pleaded” (Berl. Bib.); 3) personal experience of the comfort of the forgiveness of sin, granted to the sinner of God’s free grace, he having done nothing to deserve it. “The Lord also hath taken away thy sin” (2Sa_12:13). From this experience comes confidence and certainty of the grace received; 4) humble, quiet submission to the suffering inflicted by the Lord as the consequence of sin, which is to be for the chastisement, purification and trying of the penitent and believing heart (2Sa_12:14-23), and 5) renewed enjoyment of the friendliness and goodness of the divine love (2Sa_12:24-25).
4. As Psalms 32 exhibits the frame of mind out of which David came to sincere penitence, so Psalms 51 (as the title indicates) is the echo of the personal experience of God’s grace, which alone is the source of the forgiveness of sin and blotting out of guilt (2Sa_12:3-4 [Eng. 2Sa_12:1-2]), under the condition of penitent confession of personal transgression against the Lord deeply founded in inborn sinfulness (2Sa_12:5-8 [2Sa_12:3-6]), and of humble supplication for grace (2Sa_12:9-11 [2Sa_12:7-9]) and renewal (2Sa_12:12-14 [10–12]) out of a broken and contrite heart (2Sa_12:15-21 [2Sa_12:13-19]). On the correspondence of the chief features of this Psalm with the history see Hengstenberg’s and Hupfeld’s commentaries thereon.—[If Psalms 51 was written or composed on this occasion, then the two last verses must probably be regarded as a later addition (the sentiment is similar to that of Psalm 53:7 (6); Psa_79:9, and other passages). For the rest, the spiritual teaching of this Psalm and Psalms 32 is entirely independent of their historical origin.—Tr.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
God does not leave men in their sins to go their own way unwarned and unchastised, but sends His messengers after them to call them to repentance.—The word of God that would call the sinner to repentance reminds him on the one hand of the fulness of the divine manifestations of grace and the manifold gifts of God’s goodness, in order to shame the sinner for his ingratitude and disobedience; on the other hand it points him to the earnestness of God’s holiness and righteousness in His commands. To this end it often clothes itself in image and similitude, in order either to work in the man receptivity for the indwelling power that awakens to repentance, if the man will give heed, or so far as this is not the case, so much the more to harden the inner man, comp. Mat_13:10-16.
The right sort of awakening preaching consists in immediate direct application of the word of God to individual hearts, so that after holding up the mirror of God’s law, it is always said: Thou art the man! Men are always, according to their natural disposition, inclined to look not at their own sins, but at the sins of others, to judge and pass sentence on them. Such looking away from one’s self to the sins in the world around often finds its occasion and temptation in preaching upon the universal sinfulness of mankind and in testimonies against the sins of the times or of a whole people; if these testimonies are to be effectual for awakening in the hearers a true repentance, they must have their point in the word: Thou art the man!—As clearly as the sins of others, should we see and recognize our own sins; as inexorably and strictly as we judge and pass sentence upon others, should we enter into judgment with ourselves. But this is done only when we let the word: “Thou art the man,” press into our hearts.
The humble confession: “I have sinned against the Lord,” roots itself in the penitent recognition of guilt, and has as a consequence the assurance of forgiveness of all sins, not as something thereby deserved and won but as a gift of the free grace of God, which grace immediately answers the honest and penitent confession of guilt by acquitting of guilt; the sinner’s unreserved confession is followed by unconditional divine absolution.
Rescue of the man fallen into sin. 1) The compassionate God stretches out to him the receiving hand (Nathan’s mission and reproof). 2) The fallen one seizes this hand, and by its help lifts himself up in humility of heart and honest confession of guilt.—Repentance and grace: 1) How repentance is a work of grace, or how grace leads to repentance, and 2) How the experience of grace in the consolation of forgiveness is conditioned on repentance, or how repentance leads to grace.—The right sort of awakening preaching is that which 1) In view of the fulness of God’s goodness reveals the sinner’s ingratitude, 2) In view of the earnestness of God’s commands reveals the sinner’s disobedience, and 3) Puts an end to all self-justification and excuses by the earnestness of the word: Thou art the man!
True Repentance: 1) Wherein it consists. In penitent recognition and confession of sin as of enmity against the holy God (“I have sinned against the Lord”). 2) How it is attained. In the ways along which the sinner is led by seeking, pursuing and preventing grace. 3) Whither it leads. To the consolation of the forgiveness of all sins, to an humble yielding to the chastening hand of God under the sufferings which necessarily follow from sin, and to new experiences of God’s love in the joy which, after sufferings patiently borne, is granted by Him.—The painful consequences of sin are for the penitent man a means of grace. 1) In order to prove and try his faith and confidence in God’s fatherly love. 2) To chasten and instruct in righteousness, according to the holy will of God. 3) To purge from still clinging sinfulness. 4) To establish in a state of grace.
2Sa_12:1-4. Starke: God does not always keep silent to the sins of the ungodly, but at the proper time sets them before their eyes, Psa_50:21.—Disselhoff: That is always God’s way, first to speak to the sinner in similitudes, in dark sayings, in works and deeds. Dumb preachers, and yet calling so loud! For those similitudes in which the Lord speaks to us contain no unintelligible speech, these trumpets give no uncertain sound.—Cramer: In the office of reproof one must not be too mild, nor yet too sharp, but must so manage that what is said shall be penetrating, shall smite the heart, shall stir and shame the conscience.—[Hall: He that hates sin so much the more as the offender is more dear to him, will let David feel the bruise of his fall. If God’s best children have been sometimes suffered to sleep in a sin, at last He hath awakened them in a fright.—Nathan the prophet is sent to the prophet David. Let no man think himself too good to learn; teachers themselves may be taught that, in their own particular, which, in a generality, they have often taught others: it is not only ignorance that is to be removed, but misaffection.—There is no one thing wherein is more use of wisdom, than the due contriving of a reprehension.—Tr.]
2Sa_12:5. sq. Schlier: We see well the wrong that others do, even if it is only a trifling mote, and how little we care for our own failings, how little we mark our lapses even when it is great beams that we bear in ourselves.—[Hall: How severe justicers we can be to our very own crimes in others.—Tr.]—Wilt thou judge, then judge thyself, and wilt thou be strict, then before all be strict against thyself, and wilt thou be indulgent, then before all be indulgent towards others, but towards thyself be strict and unindulgent.
2Sa_12:7 sqq. [Hall: The life of doctrine (teaching) is in the application. We may take pleasure to hear men speak in the clouds—we never take profit till we find a propriety in the exhortation or reproof. There was not more cunning in the parable than cunning in the application: “Thou art the man.”—Tr.].—Disselhoff: He who is used by God to call out to another, “Thou art the man,” often does not himself know that he has performed Nathan’s service. The Lord sends His word like arrows; so many are struck, in the preaching of the divine word, exactly as if the word had been aimed at their heart alone. It is aimed at them too, only not by men, but by God Himself.—S. Schmid: Every sin is despising God.—Cramer: Despising the divine word is the evil fountain of all sins (Pro_29:18).—Starke: With whatever one sins, with that he is also commonly punished.—Schlier: He who insults the word of the Lord, even this word will crush him to atoms, and he who sins against the commandment of God, even this commandment which he has despised will become to him a consuming fire. He who practises injustice and violence shall in his time himself also experience injustice and violence, and he who commits adultery will in his own honor become conscious of God’s judgment.—Cramer: God punishes sin with sin, not that He has pleasure in sin, or that He works it or works with it, but that as a strict Judge, He pronounces sentence and inflicts and permits the evil.
2Sa_12:13 sq. Schlier: He who openly and unreservedly acknowledges himself guilty has thereby inwardly cut himself loose from sin, and broken with it in his heart.—Disselhoff: “I have sinned against the Lord.” There is in the Bible no confession so unconditional, no expression of repentance so short, but also none so thoroughly true. So long as sin reigns upon the earth, all penitent sinners will with this confession cast themselves down before God, into this confession will they pour out their hearts, this confession will become ever more openly, deeply, truly and movingly their prayer, and they will know how to say nothing else. [Hall: It was but a short word, but passionate; and such as came from the bottom of a contrite heart. The greatest griefs are not most verbal. Saul confessed his sin more largely, less effectually. God cares not for phrases, but for affections. David had sworn, in a zeal of justice, that the rich oppressor, for but taking his poor neighbor’s lamb, shall die the death; God, by Nathan, is more favorable to David than to take him at his word, “Thou shalt not die.” Comp. Pro_28:13.—Tr.]—Cramer: God forgives the sin out of grace, and remits also the eternal punishment; but He reserves the cross and the chastisement, not for satisfaction, but in order to continual remembrance of sin and exercise in piety, and as a terror to others.—Starke [from Hall]: So long as He smites us not as an angry Judge, we may endure to smart from Him as a loving Father (Heb_12:6-9).
2Sa_12:15 sq. J. Lange: God visits the parents in the children, whether graciously or in wrath.—Schlier: There is a distinction between punishment of sin and the outward consequences of sin, which may follow even for him who has forgiveness, only that all this is no longer a punishment of sin, but a gracious, fatherly visitation of the faithful God, who chastens His people even when He loves them, yea, even because of His love and compassion chastens them, that they may not anew fall into sin.—Disselhoff: Grace is free, wholly unconditioned. But yet he to whom grace is shown must remain under the chastening rod of the almighty and holy God.—Schlier: How should severe sickness in the house be a proof of divine favor? If God the Lord had let every thing at once go on for David according to his desire and will, who knows how soon he would perhaps again have felt secure and have forgotten the Lord who had forgiven his sins? but now that the Lord chastens him, how he learns to pray and weep, how he humbles himself, how he holds all the more faithfully to the Lord and to His word!
2Sa_12:17 sqq. Osiander: Even dear children of God are not always heard, when they pray for temporal gifts and obtain, not what they desire, but what is profitable for them (1Jn_5:14).—[Hall: Till we know the determinations of the Almighty, it is free for us to strive in our prayers, to strive with Him, not against Him; when once we know them, it is our duty to sit down in a silent contentation.—Tr.]—Disselhoff: This is the triumph of grace! It transforms the inevitable consequences of sin and horrors of damnation into a purifying fire, hot indeed, but rich in blessing, in which the objects of grace receive the image and stamp of their Redeemer. [Scott: Those who are ignorant of the divine life cannot comprehend the reasons of a believer’s conduct in his varied experiences; they mistake deep humility and fervent prayer for an impatience and an inordinate love to created objects; acquiescence in the Lord’s will, and cheerful gratitude under sharp trials, will be deemed indifference and apathy, etc.
2Sa_12:23. Wesley (Sermon CXXXII.): Profuse sorrowing for the dead is unprofitable and sinful; and the text affords a consideration which ought to prevent this sorrow.—Tr.]
2Sa_12:24 sqq. Cramer: God’s promise is the cause of His love towards us, not our merit and worthiness (1Jn_4:10).—Schlier: When we have allowed the Lord’s chastening to promote our welfare and peace, and are holding still before the Lord, even if we see around us nothing but suffering and trouble, then the Lord takes us up again and blesses us and gives us twofold for all the hardness we have had to endure. The Lord blesses much more willingly than He chastens, His fatherly hands had much rather open in beneficence than in affliction.
Disselhoff: The triumph of grace in all its glory. It unfolds itself in three steps: 1) Not the fallen one looks up to God, but God’s preventing grace in every way lets itself down to him, in order to awaken his conscience. 2) He who lets himself be awakened and openly and unconditionally confesses, receives full and unconditional pardon. 3) The pardoned man must remain under the sharp chastening rod of the Compassionate One, in order that he may learn more and more to know the depths of sin as well as of grace.
[Carlyle:26 David, the Hebrew king, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon unbelievers sneer and ask, “Is this your man according to God’s heart?” The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults? what are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it—the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ending struggle of it—be forgotten? The deadliest sin were the supercilious consciousness of no sin. David’s life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man’s moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward what is good and best. Struggle often baffled—sore baffled—driven as into entire wreck, yet a struggle never ended; ever with tears, repentance, true, unconquerable purpose begun anew.—Tr.]
Chrysostom:27 David the prophet, whose kingdom was in Palestine and temporary, but whose words as a prophet are for the ends of the earth and immortal, fell into adultery and murder—the prophet in adultery, the pearl in the mire. But he did not yet know that he had sinned; so stupefied was he. God sends to him Nathan; the prophet comes to the prophet—just as in the case of physicians, when a physician is sick he needs another physician. Nathan does not at the very door begin to rebuke and upbraid him—that would have made him hardened and shameless. … And the king said, “I have sinned against the Lord.” He did not say, Why, who art thou that reprovest me? and who sent thee to speak boldly? and how hast thou dared to do this? … But precisely in this is that noble man most admirable, that having fallen into the very depths of wickedness, he did not despair nor fling himself prostrate so as to receive from the devil a mortal blow, but quickly and with great vehemence gave a more mortal blow than he received. … This history was written not that thou mightest gaze at one who fell, but that thou mightest admire one who rose again; that thou mightest learn, whenever thou hast fallen, how to rise again. For just as physicians select the most grievous diseases and record them in the books, explaining the method of healing them, in order that by exercise in the greater they may easily overcome the lesser diseases, so also God has brought forward the greatest sins in order that they also who commit little offences may through those great examples find the task of correction to be easy.—Tr.]
[2Sa_12:1. David keeping silence. Comp. Psa_32:3-4. See above, “Hist. and Theol.,” No. 1.
2Sa_12:5-6. Not only may a guilty man judge severely the crimes of others, but his easy consciousness of guilt may even create an ill-humor that will dispose him to all the greater severity.
2Sa_12:7. “Thou art the man.” One might picture an ungrateful son, a spendthrift, a suicide, etc., and charge each, as to spiritual relations and life, upon the hearer.—Tr.]
[2Sa_12:1-14. A pattern in reproving. It is always difficult to reprove with good results, and here the difficulties were peculiarly great. An Oriental king—who has committed a series of enormous crimes, has tried to cover them up, is now moody and irritable. See now the course pursued by the prophet. 1) He approaches the offender in private. 2) He uses an affecting parallel case to awaken the sense of justice, without arousing suspicion of his design—thus inducing the king to feel, and to express himself very strongly. 3) He suddenly and emphatically applies the story, and pours upon the wrong-doer the recital of his crimes. 4) He gladly welcomes confession and penitence, and at once turns from rebuke to comfort.
2Sa_12:14. “Great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.” 1) Only the enemies of the Lord would blaspheme, upon whatsoever occasion. 2) Though the faults of good men are not the cause of blasphemy, it is a great evil to give occasion for it. (a) The enemies may thus partially delude themselves, (b) They will be sure to mislead others. 3) Though there be occasion, yet the comments of God’s enemies are blasphemous. E.g. (a) When they infer that God does not hate sin. (b) That God’s service makes men no better than they would otherwise be.—Tr.]
[2Sa_12:15-23. The death of David’s child. 1) The mortal illness of a babe, always so distressing to parents, and in this case having peculiarly distressing conditions. 2) David’s persevering prayer, notwithstanding the prophet’s prediction. 3) His submission, as soon as he knew the child was dead. 4) His confidence of being reunited with the child hereafter.—Tr.]
Footnotes:
[1][2Sa_12:1. See Josephus’ dressing up of the narrative of this chapter (Ant. 7, 7. 3–5). His additions are probably in part his own invention, and in part (as Böttcher remarks) taken from late glosses, from which also the Vulg. and Chald. may have drawn. In a few cases glosses of this sort seem to have found their way into our Heb. text.—Tr.]
[2][2Sa_12:1. ראש, instead of the usual רשּ, is found only in Sam. and Prov.; the א is always thrown out by the Masorites (Qeri) in the former book (omitted from the text in twenty-two MSS. of Kennicott), never in the latter. It may be only a scriptio plena, or it may be from a verb ראש collateral to רוש (comp. רֵאשׁ, “poverty,” Pro_6:11). In either case it seems to have been thought by the Masorites unfit for a prose-text. The stem is not found in Aramaic.—Tr.]
[3][2Sa_12:3. Some MSS. here write ראש, see above.—Instead of כִּבְשָׂת we find in the Pentateuch כַּבְשָׂת and (by transposition) כִּשְׂבָּה (as כשב for בבש); Böttcher suggests that the slenderer vowel (i) gives here a diminutive sense, but this is doubtful.—The Imperfects תִּשְׁתֶּה ,תֹּאכַל and תִּשְׁכָּב here express customary action. Instead of כְּבַת some MSS. have לְבַת.—Tr.]
[4][2Sa_12:8. Syr. בְּנֹת, doubtless a clerical error. The Arab. follows the Syriac.—Tr.]
[5][2Sa_12:9. Some MSS. and the Vulg. read: “in my eyes,” which is approved by Norzius and De Rossi. Another reading is: in the eyes of Jehovah (some MSS., Syr., Arab.).—In the latter part of the verse the repetition of the statement that David slew Uriah has given offence to some critics, who take it to be meaningless; and Syr. omits the clause: “Uriah the Hittite thou hast slain with the sword,” and transposes the two following. Böttcher therefore conjectures for the first phrase הִטִּיתָ בְארֶֹב, “thou didst ambush Uriah,” to which Thenius objects that the חֶרֶב of the following verse requires the same word here in the text, and that the two clauses are not identical in statement, but the second is descriptive and explanatory. The Bib.-Com. suggests that the last clause of this verse should be appended to 2Sa_12:10, where it seems required, whereby the repetition in 2Sa_12:9 would be avoided. On the other hand the absence of logical symmetry favors the present Heb. reading (as making it harder), while there is yet in it a certain rhetorical force; the speaker presses home in 2Sa_12:9 the charge of murder, and in 2Sa_12:10 thinks it sufficient to state the one fact (the marrying Bathsheba) that represents the whole crime.—Tr.]
[6][2Sa_12:10. Wellhausen regards 2Sa_12:10-12 as an interpolation, because no reference is made to the punishments announced in them, either in the “thou shalt not die” of 2Sa_12:13 or in 2Sa_12:14; and it is true 2Sa_12:13 attaches itself easily to 2Sa_12:9. Gramberg also (in Thenius) says that no pardon would really have been granted David, if Nathan had spoken 2Sa_12:11-12. To this latter Thenius properly replies, that pardon (being conditioned on a state of soul) does not necessarily involve a setting aside of the natural effects of sin. So also as to Wellhausen’s criticism, Nathan’s course of thought may be thus represented: he sets forth David’s sin (2Sa_12:9), denounces against his house the everlasting vengeance of the sword (2Sa_12:10), and an open requital of his crime on him personally (2Sa_12:11-12); thereupon David confesses his sin, anticipating the worst consequences for himself, and Nathan replies that (notwithstanding what had just been said) death should not now be visited on him; yet that he might not be without immediate punishment, his child should die. Thus the contrast between the punishment of 2Sa_12:10-12 and that of 2Sa_12:13-14, will lie in the immediateness or remoteness. For the rest, it is not necessary to suppose that this scene occurred in a minute, even though we should not (with Ewald) assume a considerable interval of time in the middle of 2Sa_12:13 (at the Pisqa).—Tr.]
[7][2Sa_12:11. The Yod in רֵעֶיךָ is to be regarded as radical (though some MSS. omit it) and the word as singular.—Tr.]
[8][2Sa_12:13. The masoretic note here is: “Pisqa (division) in the middle of the verse.” This doubtless indicates that a pause was felt to be desirable between David’s solemn confession of sin and Nathan’s announcement of pardon; but whether it is also intended to indicate an interval of time must remain undetermined.—Tr.]
[9][2Sa_12:14. So all versions and MSS. Geiger thinks that this is a case similar to 1Sa_25:22, where the “enemies” is inserted to avoid an irreverent or injurious expression. But in that passage (see the discussion there in “Text. and Gram.”) the word “enemies” is obviously out of place, while here it suits very well; and the possibility of the causative sense of the Piel must be omitted. Yet if the Heb. text be retained, we must suppose some publicity given to David’s crime; and the reading: “thou hast despised Jehovah,” would agree well with the context.—Tr.]
[10][2Sa_12:31. Chron. (2Sa_20:3) has וישר, “he sawed,” which is adopted by Erdmann, Bib.-Com., and most critics. The Heb. phrase here is unusual and hard, and the reading of Chron. has against it only that the verb sawed does not agree well with the instruments of threshing and cutting. Therefore a general sense, cut, has been assigned to the verb, which, however, is doubtful. It is held by some that our Heb. text means only that David put his prisoners to work with saws, etc.; but the words will hardly bear this interpretation. Chald. has “sawed” (מסר), and so the Vulg. (probably a paraphrase).—Tr.]
[11][2Sa_12:31. Erdmann: “made them enter their Moloch,” retaining the Kethib, as he explains in his exposition. Eng. A. V. adopts the Qeri, which seems the better reading.—Tr.]
[12][It is doubtful whether this phrase belongs to the Vulgate text. It is not found in our present printed edition, nor in the Codex Amiatinus; and the expression is not Hebrew but Latin (Wellhausen).—Josephus’ language “he asked him to tell him what he thought” (Ant. 7, 7, 3) is a natural introduction in Josephus’ expansive manner, and does not necessarily suggest a corresponding phrase in his Greek text.—Tr.]
[13] לְאִישׁ, anarthrous, defined by the Article with the following adjective. See Ewald, § 293 a.
[14][Especially as no murder is introduced into the parable. No doubt it was part of Nathan’s plan, as Dr. Erdmann suggests, to conceal the immediate reference from David. He therefore does not minutely imitate the circumstances of David’s crime. and the interpretation of the parable must simply take the central thought and apply it. Here was a man that wronged his neighbor by depriving him of valuable property; the wrong is heightened by the fact that the aggressor has much and the sufferer little. Such an aggressor was David. Farther than this it is not proper to carry the interpretation of particulars. Abarbanel’s explanation (given by Patrick) is too minute.—Tr.]
[15][In Hahn’s ed. of the Heb. Bib. both text and margin have “his eyes” (with a mere orthographic difference); but in some other edd. (see De Rossi) the Qeri or margin is as Dr. Erdmann states.—Tr.]
[16] נִאֵץ Piel Inf. Abs.; the i for assonance with the following Perfect, Ew. § 240 c.
[17][Sept., changing the accents, has: “what is this that thou hast done for the child? while it yet lived thou didst fast, etc.,” and this is adopted by Thenius (after Hitzig), and declared by Wellhausen to be the only possible construction of the words. The latter, however, points out the two difficulties in this construction, that we do not expect any qualifying phrase after “thou hast done,” and that the curtness and isolation of the חַי is hard. He therefore reads בְּעוֹר (as in 2Sa_12:22) “while the child was yet alive” instead of בעבור, for which, says Böttcher, there is no need. The construction of Eng. A. V., though not without its difficulties, may be retained, though Wellhausen’s suggestion commends itself as more natural and grammatical.—Tr.]
[18]Kethib יְחַנֵּנִי Impf. Qal, Qeri וְחַנַּנִי Perf. with Waw consecutive.
[19][Solomon, in Heb. Shelomoh. = “peaceful.” Other names from the same stem are Shalmai (Ezr_2:46. margin), Shelomi (Num_34:27), Shelumiel (Num_1:6), Shelemiah (1Ch_26:14), Shelomith (Lev_24:11; 2Ch_11:20). Sept. and Vulg. write Salomon, and New Test. (Greek) Solomon, which our translators have adopted (Bib.-Com.). The Arabic form is Suleiman, Syr. Sheleimun. The final n comes from the attempt of the Sept. to give the name a Greek appearance, or, it may really have taken this form in Egypt.—Tr.]
[20][The first part of the name Jedidiah means the same as David. Comp. Amadeus.—Tr.]
[21][There is a disposition to assimilate the two designations in 2Sa_12:26-27, city of the kingdom and city of water. In 2Sa_12:27 Syr., Arab., Chald., and some Heb. MSS. read as in 2Sa_12:26, and Wellhausen proposes to read 2Sa_12:26 as 2Sa_12:27. Certainly if Joab had already captured the whole city, there would be no room for David’s capture (2Sa_12:29), and so Keil’s explanation must be adopted if we retain the Heb. text.—Tr.]
[22] מְגֵרוֹת for מַגְזֵרוֹת.
[23] מַלְבֵּן instead of Kethib מלכן.
[24]Böttcher: The Kethib needs no change, for מִלְבֹּן is a Hebraized form of מִלכֹּם, the ending om being augmentative.
[25][As Dr. Erdmann remarks, the standing formula is “to pass through to Moloch,” and the Heb. text cannot be so rendered; it is “in” malkon. It is a further objection to this view that the phrase was used distinctly of the worship of Moloch, and would hardly be used of an act of punishment. But if the Qeri be adopted, the phrase is still hard, because of the preposition: “he made them pass through in the kiln,” the usual phrase omitting the preposition. No satisfactory translation of the words has yet been offered.—Tr.]
[26]“Hero-Worship.” Quoted more fully by Taylor.
[27]Collected and abridged from a number of passing allusions.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv5, 7, 8 the man that hath done this thing shall surely…
the man that hath done this thing shall surely die--This punishment was more severe than the case deserved, or than was warranted by the divine statute (Exo 22:1). The sympathies of the king had been deeply enlisted, his indignation aroused, but his conscience was still asleep; and at the time when he was most fatally indulgent to his own sins, he was most ready to condemn the delinquencies and errors of others.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 NATHAN’S PARABLE AGAINST DAVID, 2Sa_12:1-14.
NATHAN’S PARABLE AGAINST DAVID, 2Sa_12:1-14.
“The year had passed; the dead Uriah was forgotten; the child of guilt was born in the royal house, and loved with all the passionate tenderness of David’s paternal heart. Suddenly the prophet Nathan appears before him. He comes as if to claim redress for a wrong in humble life. It was the true mission of the prophets, as champions of the oppressed, in the courts of kings. It was the true prophetic spirit that spoke through Nathan’s mouth. The apologue of the rich man and the ewe lamb has, besides its own intrinsic tenderness, a supernatural elevation, which is the best sign of true revelation. It ventures to disregard all particulars, and is content to aim at awakening the general sense of outraged justice. It fastens on the essential guilt of David’s sin — not its sensuality, or its impurity, so much as its meanness and selfishness. It rouses the king’s conscience by that teaching described in 1Co_14:24-25, as specially characteristic of prophecy, making manifest his own sin in the indignation which he has expressed at the sin of another.” — Stanley.
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1. Sent Nathan unto David — This was after the birth of the child of Bathsheba. Compare 2Sa_12:14-15 with 2Sa_11:27. By this time, perhaps, David began to think that his sin was unknown or forgotten.
Two men in one city — David and Uriah.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–9 Ch. 2Sa_12:1-6. Nathan’s Parable
Ch. 2Sa_12:1-6. Nathan’s Parable
1. the Lord sent Nathan] A year had passed, and Bath-sheba’s child had been born, before Nathan was sent to rouse the king’s slumbering conscience.
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To this crisis belong Psalms 51. and 32. See Introd. ch. VIII. § 5, p. 47.
and said unto him] Some MSS of the Vulg. add Give me a judgment. The words cannot be regarded as part of the original text, though they are a correct gloss. The prophet asks for the king’s decision, as though he were consulting him about a case which had really happened. Compare the plan adopted by the widow of Tekoah (ch. 2Sa_14:4-7); and by the prophet sent to rebuke Ahab (1Ki_20:35-41). Other parables are found in the O.T. in Jdg_9:7-15; 2Ki_14:9; Isa_5:1-2.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (1) Sent Nathan.—Nathan was already on intimate terms with…
(1) Sent Nathan.—Nathan was already on intimate terms with David, and recognised by him as a prophet (2Sa_7:1-17).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 Jehovah sent Nathan unto David. Though David had remained…
Jehovah sent Nathan unto David. Though David had remained unrepentant for nearly a year, for we read in ver. 14 that the child was born, yet we are not to suppose that there had been no compunctions of conscience. A man could scarcely pass from utter callousness to a state of mind so tender as that depicted in Psalm 51. without some preparation. Assuredly David had suffered much mental distress, but he had given no outward sign of contrition, and possibly, but for Nathan"s message, he might have overpowered his conscience, and his self-reproaches have become less frequent and agitating. More probably he was slowly ripening for repentance, and Nathan"s words let loose the agonizing feelings which had more and more struggled within him against his baser lusts. And the prophet"s apologue was exactly suited to rouse up that strong sense of justice which was so noble an element in David"s character. Doubtless it was framed for this purpose, and Nathan knew what was the right chord to touch. But we must not, because he was wise and skilful, refuse Nathan our fullest admiration for his manly courage. It is a very dangerous thing to tell princes of their sins, and especially when that prince is an absolute monarch, and his sins adultery and murder. But the position which Nathan held in David"s court made it his duty so to do, and there is no stronger testimony to the power of religion and of God"s grace than that it makes men so brave in doing their duty. We may feel sure that Nathan had long grieved over David"s fall, and reflected upon the steps which ought to be taken for his admonition. And now, in answer to prayer, the command came from Jehovah bidding him go and bear his testimony. Nathan"s parable is admirably adapted for its purpose. While making no direct reference to adultery or murder, it puts very strongly the injustice and heartlessness of the oppression of the weak by the strong, as exemplified in the deed of the rich man. On many occasions David had shown a warm and generous indignation at injustice, and a righteous pity for those wronged. Would such a feeling be called out now? David"s conduct was had enough, and if there was no outburst of anger at the base deed reported to him, and no welling up of pity for the poor man robbed of his one joy, then was his case hopeless, and Nathan must withdraw in despair, and leave David to his fate. But his better feelings were not destroyed, and when Nathan saw them deeply stirred, he broke in with the stern application to the king"s own sin, "Thou art the man!" The courage and the skill of the prophet are alike admirable.
HOMILETICS.
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Vers. 1-14. The facts are:
1. God sends Nathan the prophet to David, who tells him a story of the greed of a wicked rich man, who, to satisfy his avarice, took away and slew the pot ewe lamb of a poor man.
2. David, accepting the story as a matter of fact, is very angry with thisman, and swears that for his deed and lack of compassion he ought to die and restore fourfold.
3. Nathan thereupon reveals the parabolic character of his narrative, bysaying unto David, "Thou art the man!
4. He then proceeds to state
(1) the goodness of God to him in anointing him king, in delivering him from Saul, in giving him the royal succession, and in guaranteeing all else that might be needed;
(2) his despite to the commands of God his murder of Uriah, and his taking possession of Uriah"s wife.
1. He also declares, by way of punishment, that war would arise in his ownhouse; that the purity and safety of his domestic life would be invaded; and that the punishment of his secret sin would be open.
2. On David confessing his guilt, Nathan assures him that the Lord had sofar put away his sin that he should not die, but that the child of his guilt should.
Nathan"s parable.
This remarkable parable is, perhaps, the most exquisite Genesis of the kind in the Old Testament. Its beauty and pathos are enhanced by the plain matter of fact way in which the historian narrates, in ch. 11., the fall of David and his subsequent crime. Apart from its specific purpose, it indicates to us the occasional functions of the prophets in those times as admonishers of kings and rulers, and consequently as representatives of the Divine element in the history of Israel. The great variety of teaching in this parable may be briefly indicated thus
I A DOUBLE LIFE. At least ten months had elapsed from the date of David"s fall to the visit of Nathan. During that period many public and private acts had been performed by the king in the ordinary course of life, in addition to those referred to in 2Sa_11:14-27. It was his policy to keep up a good appearance to be in administration, in public worship, in regard for religious ordinances, and in general morality all that he had ever been. He passed still as the pious, just ruler and exemplary man. That was one life. But inwardly there was another. The conscience was dull, or, if it spoke plainly, was constantly being suppressed. The uncomfortableness of secret sin induced self-reproach and loss of self-respect. He was an instance of a man "holding the truth in unrighteousness". (Rom_1:18) This double life is the experience of every good man who falls into sin and seeks to cover it up. He knows too much to be really happy, but he is too enslaved by his sin to be truly godly. The outside is fair; within is desolation.
II FELLOWSHIP IN SIN. David and Bathsheba shared in a fellowship of sin. They, most probably without words, communed with each other over their guilt, and so far strengthened the chains of iniquity. Two individuals in possession of a dreadful secret do not, dare not, speak about it. There is simply a common understanding and a mutual support in keeping up the appearance necessary to social reputation. It is a pitiable sight before God and holy angels! It is a case of the fallen, the defiled, the inwardly wretched, and the prospectively condemned, seeking to find comfort and strength in each other"s sympathy. The channels of sympathetic feeling are filled by a polluted stream of affection and interest.
III A LOST CHARM. It is well known that a pure disposition and a clear conscience lend a charm to personal life; much more does such deep and strong piety as once characterized the "man after God"s own heart." If we, in reading the historic narrative of David"s early years, and the psalms, in which his best thoughts are embodied, feel the spell of his spirit, we may be sure that those in daily converse with him recognized a charm of the most exalted kind. But all that was now gone, because the honesty and the purity from which it sprang were no more. In vain did he strive to maintain the form of godliness; in vain his careful discharge of official duties and kindly bearing towards his friends. The "secret of the Lord" was lost. The salt had lost its savour. To truly spiritual men he would not be as in former times. This loss of a spiritual charm always takes place when good men fall into sin and cover it up. The light of the spiritual eye is dim. The pure ring of the voice is gone. The "form of godliness" is left, but the "power" is no more.
IV THE DIVINE RESERVE. At least ten months elapsed before Nathan was commissioned by God to speak to David. The lustful look, the secret deed, the scheme for concealment and for the death of Uriah, were allowed to pass and issue in seeming success without one act of a decidedly positive character, as far as we know, on the part of God either to smite with punishment or bring to penitence. The "workers of iniquity" flourished, and the innocent perished unavenged (Psa_92:7 Psa_12:5; Pro_1:11-19) That conscience uttered its protest, and that the laws of mind as constituted by God worked misery from the first in the inner life of David, is no doubt true; but there was no open justice, no obvious interposition on behalf of the oppressed, no distinct and proportionate chastisement, no special call to repentance. Human nature took its course, and human society remained in relation to the sinner unchanged. Yet God is not indifferent. He slumbereth not. Government does not relax its hold on each man. The explanation is that God is in no haste in what he does; he reserves his action for a while for reasons more complicate and far reaching than we can trace. The very reserve only renders the judgment, when it comes, more impressive. Human nature is evidently favoured as a free power, which must have certain scope both for origination of evil, maturing of evil, and filling up its own measure of chastisement. There is a patience, a goodness, in the reserve which need to be studied (Rom_2:4-9; 1Pe_3:20; 2Pe_3:9, 2Pe_3:15) This reserve attends many a modern sinner"s cause.
V THE DIVINE BEGINNING OF SALVATION. Had David been left to himself the probability is that the coils of iniquity would have been formed around him more and more as time advanced; for the law of habit here holds good. It is instructive to observe that the first step towards a change in his condition was on the Divine side. God sent his prophet Nathan, charged with a merciful purpose, though mercy was to be tempered with judgment. Certainly David might well say in days subsequent, "My salvation cometh from him". (Psa_62:1, Psa_62:7) Here we have an illustration of the great truth that God is the Author of our salvation. He seeks us. He comes to us in our low estate. This is true of mankind as a (Joh_3:16, Joh_3:17; 1Jn_4:9, 1Jn_4:10) of each one brought from the ways of sin, (1Jn_4:19) and of the backslider. (Psa_23:3) It is all of grace. Our Saviour"s earthly life of pleading and seeking was a visible and audible illustration of the outgoing of the heart of the Father towards the fallen.
VI THE DEFENSIVE ATTITUDE OF IMPENITENCE. The elaborate simplicity of Nathan"s parable, in order to reach the conscience and heart of David, suggest to us the fact of a certain defensive attitude of David"s mind, which had to be broken down. It is a special weapon in a "holy war," designed to attack a peculiar line of defence. It is well known how men, when they have done a wrong, are on the qui vive lest the wrong should be detected and brought home to them; and the resources of reason, ingenuity, and cunning are employed to ward off any approach to the inner life. Any attempt to touch the springs of penitence or remorse, or to arouse the fears which attend conviction, is neutralized by some counter move of thought or resolve. Hearers of the gospel knows if they would only testify honestly, how they too often fortify themselves against statements, arguments, and appeals. The failure of some ministers and teachers lies in their not knowing enough of human nature to direct their statements so as to meet the actual mental attitude of those who live in sin. A study of this subject is of extreme importance to all who seek to convince and to save men. There are various avenues to the conscience and heart. Some are so utterly closed and guarded that it is a waste of power to seek to penetrate through them. A fortress should be attacked in its weakest point, and only a very special survey can find out where it is. Nathan had reconnoitred the position, and assailed David along the best line.
VII THE USE OF THE GOOD ELEMENT IN MAN. Nathan approached David in friendliness, recognizing him as a man generally mindful of his people, pitiful towards the poor and weak, and a lover of justice. He knew that there were still elements of good in the fallen saint. The great transgression had not obliterated all trace of the noble qualities of former days. Where these did not come in the way of the one selfish lust which had for the time gained dominion, they were not only cherished, but were at hand for expression when occasion required. In proportion as these could be strengthened and utilized, there would be hope of bringing them to bear, by a reflected light, on the one deed in which they had been suppressed. By a flank movement, and using a piece of history as the instrument, he hoped to turn the whole force of David"s better qualities on the cherished secret sin. It was an instance of a wise setting of one part of a man"s nature against another part, so that, by a sort. of moral dynamic, the worse should be forced out. In dealing with men we ought to avail ourselves of their good qualities and bring them to bear on the removal of the bad. When Christ dealt with publicans and sinners he did not make a direct attack on their sins. There was a something in them which he made the ground of appeal. In the vilest sinner there is some human love, or kindliness, or sense of right. Who is wise to win souls? What are the methods, according to varying temperaments, education, habits, and indulgences?
VIII GOD"S JUDGMENT FORESTALLED BY CONSCIENCE. History is a mental reflector. In Nathan"s story, which was not a parable to David when he heard it, David saw a sin and a judgment. He was true to his better qualities when he denounced the sin and pronounced sentence of death. The story became to David a parable the moment the prophet said to him, "Thou art the man! The whole figures then become specific, and he was the one most conspicuous against whom the judgment was pronounced. The psychological and moral changes involved in this we cannot now deal with; the point is that, when David"s aroused righteous indignation pronounced judgment on the evil man, the human conscience really forestalled the judgment of God on David"s sin by declaring its deserts. God does not, in providence or on the day of judgment, declare anything really new to the impenitent sinner. Conscience some time or other has virtually given the sentence of condemnation. Those who worked themselves up to a state of self-delusion (Mat_7:22, Mat_7:23) knew a time when the conscience witnessed against the formalities which issued in its being seared (Eph_4:19; 1Ti_4:2) It is this assent of conscience which will render the sense of injustice impossible in the future judgments God may see fit to bring on those who "hold the truth in unrighteousness.
GENERAL LESSONS.
1. We should take warning from the instances in the Bible, and notpresume on God"s silence, or think that, because we are left to pursue our own courses, it will always be so.
2. There are always in existence agents or agencies by which in due timesin will be rebuked and exposed either in this life or in the life to come (Mat_10:26; 2Co_5:10)
1. In dealing with the lapsed we should not act on the same rule in allcases, but deal with each according to his peculiar character.
2. It will repay parents, teachers, and evangelists to study human natureand the records of biography and sacred history to find out the best methods of reaching the conscience of the impenitent.
3. We should be ready, as was Nathan, to carry through the most painfulduties when God calls us in his providence to them.
The convicted sinner.
The fitness of the parable is revealed in its sequel. Nathan, laying aside the character of a friendly visitor relating a story of wrong, now assumes the functions of the prophet of God, and turns the whole light and force of David"s just indignation in upon himself, and, with an incisiveness most irresistible, brings an accusation of guilt without naming the actual deed done; states the aggravating circumstances arising out of the exceeding goodness of God in the past; declares the retribution about to come; and, on witnessing the true penitence of the sinner, announces the fact of forgiveness, but qualifies the announcement by foretelling an event of blended justice and mercy. The commission of sin is unhappily common enough, and also, we may thankfully admit, the conviction of sinners is an event of frequent occurrence. Few sins exhibit the peculiar aggravations of this one of David, and few convictions are more sudden and thorough than his; but as there are common qualities in all sins and true convictions of sin, we may regard this case of David"s as setting forth features in human experience and Divine procedure universally true.
I THE FACT OF SIN IS BROUGHT HOME TO THE CONSCIENCE. David all along knew of the existence of the sin, but had conducted himself as though it were not. In general terms he would doubtless speak of sin as an evil of deepest dye, and desire its banishment from mankind. Such sentiments were at the base of his deep interest in Nathan"s story, and gave rise to the outburst of indignation. Sin was evil, the sinner ought to be punished, the doer of this deed must come under the ban of law. All this was quite correct. It was orthodoxy. The friendly visitor could not but admit its force. But it was just here, when David was dealing with generalities, and was eager to see general principles applied to a particular case, that Nathan brought him away from the general to the particular, from others to himself. "Thou art the man!" This was a straight charge. Nathan held a twofold position he was a man in Israel, a subject and neighbour, a pious friend of David"s; he was also a prophet, a representative of God, and in that capacity a superior to David. When, then, the friendly visitor said, with an unrecordable tone and gesture, "Thou art the man!" it was evident to David
(1) that his deed, long kept secret, was known to his most influential and incorruptible subject and friend; and
(2) that God was speaking straight to his conscience. Even so far as related to Nathan as a good man in Israel, the revelation of his acquaintance with the deed was startling and astounding; but the most potent element in the utterance was the direct charge of God. A sinner cannot look on the Holy One he dare not. The conscience knows the awful voice of God, and, when that voice speaks straight to it, all thought of men and opinions vanishes, and the soul in its solemn individuality feels itself in the actual presence of the Eternal. In true conviction the man "comes to himself." The deed of evil is brought home. In a light not of earth, self is seen to be undone, because the sin, hitherto professedly not a reality, is now forced on self as its own offspring.
II THE AGGRAVATION OF SIN IS SET FORTH. As soon as the charge is brought home, and before the paralyzed man can speak, the prophet, in the name of God, with swift words reminds him of his privileges and the manifold blessings and honours God had showered on him or was ready to grant if needed. He was a chosen servant of the Eternal, called to perform a part in the working out of a great future for the world; he had filled a position of honour and influence; he had been charged with high and holy duties; he had been blessed with plenty, and more than ordinary provision for the necessary cravings of nature (vers. 7, 8). Yet, "Thou art the man!" None can doubt that here was sin of the most aggravated character. No sin is excusable or free from Divine condemnation; otherwise it were not sin, but weakness or fault. But some sins are worthy of being punished with "many stripes" because of being committed under special circumstances, e.g. the possession of religious light and feeling; the occupation of a position of power, and the being recipient of manifold tokens of Divine care and love. But be the privileges many or few, when God brings home the guilt to the conscience, the sin is revealed in the light of past mercies. The swift review of David"s advantages by Nathan finds its analogue in the swift floating before the mind of the circumstances of one"s position which render the sin so utterly inexcusable. Men see in a few moments the reasons for their utter shame and self-abasement. This is a feature in all true conviction, and tends to the proper prostration of the soul before God. Saul of Tarsus knew this. It is an unspeakable mercy that God does set our sins in the light of his great goodness.
III THE HEART IS PROBED TO REVEAL THE CAUSE OF SIN. "Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord?" (ver. 9). No sooner did the light flash on the conscience to set forth the aggravated character of the sin, than with unrelenting incisiveness the "wherefore" followed to probe those depths of the heart from whence the evil sprang. The question really contains an inquiry and a statement. Why? "Thou didst despise. The eye of the sinner is turned in upon himself, to search out and behold those vile feelings and false principles out of which issued the preference of self-will over the holy will of God, which had been so clearly expressed in the Law of the Lord and in the special intimations of Providence. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" The time of conviction is a time of probing and searching. It is well for men under conviction to face the real facts, and get at the causes that lie out of sight. There must be some dreadfully subtle evils lurking within to induce a man to "despise" the august majesty of God"s will by setting it aside. Was it not in reference to this probing, and probably in reference to this very deed, that the psalmist said, "Search me, O God"? (Psa_139:23; cf. 51:5, 6, 10)
IV THE PUNISHMENT OF SIN IS BROUGHT TO MIND. The prophet ceases not; without giving the convicted man time to speak, he passes on to tell of the retribution that is sure to come by the will of God. The man of whom Nathan once spoke such good things (2Sa_7:12-17) is now informed of coming trouble in life; that this trouble will be the same in kind with that of his sin murder and adultery; that it will not be secret, as was his, in performance, but open, to his disgrace; that it will arise out of his own house, consequent in a measure on the mischief wrought by his own sin on his domestic life. Had David not fallen, he would have been a different man, and consequently his private influence at home among his children would have been more holy and powerful; his relation to his kingdom would have been more satisfactory, and therefore moral and political circumstances would probably, arise of so important a character as to have prevented the creation of the conditions out of which the troubles now recorded in his later history arose. He was to reap according to his sowing. In the conviction of sin, the recognition of personal guilt is the chief element, as we have seen (division I); but just as here the messenger revealed the aggravation of the guilt, probed the heart for causes, and referred to coming retribution, so in the simple processes of mind attending true conviction there is an anticipation of punishment an assurance that evil is coming on the soul as a consequence of sin done. Sin is transgression of law; law involves authority to vindicate its righteousness; and, as soon as the conviction of sin is real, the logic of conscience points to coming judgment. Whether it be a temporal judgment, as in Old Testament references, or eternal, as in New Testament references, the experience is virtually the same.
V THE CONFESSION OF GUILT IS ABSOLUTE. The guilty king sat in silence till the prophet had delivered his charge. The time was brief, but the power accompanying the words was Divine. Swifter than lightning the spell of hypocritical concealment was broken. The bonds in which the unholy passion had long held the soul were snapped asunder. The eye of conscience, turning in upon self, gave fresh life to the old suppressed loyalty to righteousness and God, and, as a consequence, the confession came, "I have sinned against the Lord." The question as to whether the historian here simply gives a summary of what passed, and intended to include also the fifty-first psalm, or whether literally this is all that was said and done, does not affect our purpose. There is here a recognition prompt, unqualified, of sin, not as a fault, a weakness, but of sin as known by conscience and stamped with the curse of God and man. It is also a recognition of sin as against God, not as a wrong done to Uriah, Bathsheba, or Israel, or his own family. The conscience is not indifferent to the injuries done to men, but when fully aroused, and face to face with sin as sin, it seems to see only God. Hence the expression in Psa_51:4. Again, there is pain and shame, not because of what men may say or do, not because personal influence will now be weakened, but because it is sin. It is the sin which troubles and appals the truly convicted soul. Moreover, there is abstention from all claim to consideration; no excuse, no palliation. The convicted one can only say, "I have sinned." There is obviously an inward bowing of the spirit before the holy God; an absolute surrender as undone, condemned, helpless, lost. The very brevity of the confession bespeaks the depth of penitential woe. Contrast the wordy confession (1Sa_15:17-25; cf. Luk_15:18, 19 18:13)
VI FORGIVENESS IS FREE, FULL, BUT QUALIFIED. How long Nathan stood by the prostrate silent king, and whether this confession was the literal whole or not, we do not know; but he saw enough to enable him to say in the name of God, "The Lord bath put away thy sin a statement clear and unreserved, intended to go home to the smitten heart. The forgiveness of sin has to do with a personal relation of God to man. It is the restoration of the personal relation of favour and fellowship which had been inter rupted by sin. It is conditional on true repentance, the objective ground being the sacrificial death of Christ under the Old Testament dispensation by anticipation, (Rom_3:25) and under the New by retrospective reference. God is the sole Judge of the reality of repentance. He looketh at the heart. He knew that David"s conviction had issued in the state" of mind known as true repentance, and foreseeing this before it occurred, he commissioned the prophet to "declare and pronounce" to David "being penitent," the remission of his sin. "Thy sins are forgiven thee!" Blessed words! How often brought to penitents since our Lord uttered them! But the pardon left untouched the natural consequences of sin referred to in vers. 19, 20, because a personal relation does not alter the course of the forces which a man sets in motion on earth by his sin. Also, the child born must die, not to its injury, but gain, yet in judgment, so that the father should not find comfort in the fruit of his sin, and in mercy, lest there should be a living memorial of his guilt and shame to which men might point and further blaspheme the Name of the Lord. The same holds good of our forgiveness; it is free, full, but qualified by the continuance of some ill consequences which chastise us all our days. The sinner never entirely gets rid of all the earthly effects of his sin while on earth; they work in his flow of thought and feeling, and often in the checks on his influence, and possibly on the character and health of others. The full redemption comes with the glorified body and the new heavens and earth.
GENERAL LESSONS.
1. The first thing to be sought in men in order to their salvation is a duerecognition of themselves as sinners in the sight of God. A general recognition of the evil of sin as distinct from consciousness of personal guilt may really be a cover for unpardoned sin.
2. The tendency and drift of God"s messages to men living in sin is to bringthem to a right mind in reference to their personal position in his sight, as a preliminary to their seeking forgiveness.
3. Much will be found to depend, in respect to religious views and action,on the apprehension men have of what Sin really is and their own guilt. A prepared state of mind is necessary to get good out of gospel statements.
4. The Christian religion especially lays stress on intense individuality inour relationships to God and to good and evil, and aims to bring us to a true self-knowledge.
5. It is an astonishing illustration of the tremendous power of our lowertendencies that they may even gain ascendency over men of most exalted privileges and whose very position would suggest superiority to them.
6. It behoves Christian people living in the enjoyment of many advantages to consider well their conduct in comparison with that of others less favoured.
7. The essence of sin abides in all times, though the form may vary; for asAdam preferred the suggestion of the evil one and so despised the word of the Lord, so did David; and on this method did Satan seek to win over Christ in the wilderness.
8. It is of extreme importance to remember that we may carry about withus deep laid and subtle tendencies which may assert their power in an unguarded hour; and hence we should often probe our heart, and search and see by the help of God whether there be any evil way within us.
9. It should operate as a deterrent to know that our sins will entailunavoidable social and physical troubles as long as life lasts.
10. We are authorized in speaking to the truly penitent of the free and full forgiveness which God has in store for them, and which through his abounding grace they may have at once.
11. In the fuller sense of the words it may be declared to the penitent that they shall not die. (Joh_3:16)
12. The evil deeds of professors are a stumbling block to other men, and give occasion to them to blaspheme, and as this must be a most bitter element in the life of the restored backslider, so it is a warning to all Christians to take heed lest they fall, and so bring occasion for reproach on the Name which is above every name.
HOMILIES BY B. DALE. Ver. 1. (JERUSALEM.)
A faithful reprover of sin.
Jehovah sent Nathan to David." The sin Of David could not be hid. It was known to his servants (2Sa_11:4) and to Joab; it must have been surmised by many from his hasty marriage; and now it was fully manifest. (2Sa_11:27) About a year had elapsed. "What a year for David to have spent! What a joyless, sunless, godless year! Were God"s words still sweet to his taste? Were they still the rejoicing of his heart? or had he come to hate the threatening of the Law?" (J. Wright). At length Nathan (2Sa_7:3) came an example of a faithful reprover (Psa_141:5; Pro_27:6; 1Sa_1:13 1Sa_2:22) Consider
I HIS DIVINE COMMISSION. He came, not because he was sent for by David, nor because he was prompted by natural reason or impulse, (2Sa_7:3) but in obedience to the word of the Lord (ver. 7), and in fulfilment of his prophetic calling. "It was the true mission of the prophets, as champions of the oppressed in the courts of kings; it was the true prophetic spirit that spoke through Nathan"s mouth" (Stanley).
1. Reproof should be administered only according to the will of God. It is not forevery one to assume the office of reprover; (Psa_50:16) nor to administer reproof to every one who may deserve it, especially when holding a position of authority. In this matter men are apt to run before they are sent. The duty is a relative one, and demands careful consideration before it is undertaken.
2. The will of God concerning the administration of reproof is indicated in various ways; such as the authority given to parents, magistrates, pastors, and teachers rebuke," etc.; (1Ti_4:2 1Ti_5:1) the teachings of the Divine Word; the guidance of the Divine Spirit.
3. When the will of God is clearly made known, it should be humbly,readily, and diligently obeyed; both when it requires his servants to testify his favour (2Sa_7:4, 2Sa_7:25) and his displeasure. (2Sa_11:27)
II HIS CONSUMMATE WISDOM. In nothing are wisdom and prudence more needed than in reproof. If given unwisely it is likely to excite opposition, produce equivocation, repel and harden. "A word fitly spoken," etc.. (Pro_25:11, Pro_25:12) It should be given:
1. At a proper time when the proof of wrong doing admits of no denial, and the mind of the wrong doer is duly prepared. It is not probable that Nathan came immediately after he first heard of David"s transgression. "His task was not to gain a confession, but only to facilitate it. He was appointed by God to await the time of the internal crisis of David" (Hengstenberg).
2. When the offender is alone, (Mat_18:15) and is likely to pay greater heed to it and to be less influenced by what others think. Sometimes, however, sinners must be "rebuked before all, that others also may fear". (1Ti_5:20)
3. In a maimer adapted to produce the most salutary effect; with harmless wisdom (Mat_10:16) and holy and beneficent "guile" (2Co_12:16) displayed in;
(1) A respectful, courteous, and conciliatory bearing. To begin with rude reproaches is to ensure failure.
(2) An ingenious invention of a "form of speech" (2Sa_14:20) and illustration suitable to the case.
(3) A generous recognition of the better qualities in men. "David"s goodness is not denied because of his sin, nor is David"s sin denied because of his goodness.
(4) A clear statement of the truth, avoiding exaggeration and everything that may hinder its illuminating force.
(5) A strong appeal to the conscience, so as to quicken its action as a witness and judge.
(6) A dexterous application of admitted principles and expressed judgments and emotions.
(7) An effectual removal of the mists of self-deception, so as to enable the evil doer to see his actual character and conduct, and constrain him to reprove and condemn himself. The wisdom of the prophet in fulfilling his mission to the king was "inimitably admirable." "Observing that this direct road (the recommendation of self-knowledge) which led to it (the reformation of mankind) was guarded on all sides by self-love, and consequently very difficult to open access, public instructors soon found out that a different and more artful course was requisite. As they had not strength to remove this flattering passion which stood in their way and blocked up the passages to the heart, they endeavoured by stratagem to get beyond it, and, by a skilful address, if possible to deceive it. This gave rise to the only manner of conveying their instructions in parables, fables, and such sort of indirect applications; which, though they could not conquer this principle of self-love, yet often laid it asleep, or at least overreached it for a few moments, till a just judgment could be procured. The Prophet Nathan seems to have been a great master in this art of address" (Laurence Sterne).
III HIS HOLY COURAGE. His mission was as perilous as it was painful; and might, if it failed, have cost him his life. But he feared not "the wrath of the king" (Pro_16:14 Pro_19:12; Heb_11:27) Such moral courage as he exhibited:
1. Is inspired by faith in God, whose face it beholds, and on whose might it relies.
2. Consists in the fearless fulfilment of duty, whatever consequences it may involve the loss of friendship or other earthly good; the endurance of bonds, suffering, and death. "None of these things move me," etc. (Act_20:24)
3. Appears in simple, bold, direct, and unreserved utterance of God"s. (Eze_33:7) At the proper moment the prophet changed his style of address; gave it a particular application, "the very life of doctrine;" and, in the name of the supreme King and Judge, arraigned the offender, declared his guilt, and pronounced his sentence. "His example is especially to be noted by all whose office is to "rebuke with all authority ("Speaker"s Commentary").
IV HIS BENEVOLEST AIM. He came not only to testify against sin, to maintain the authority of the Law, etc.; but also (in connection therewith) to benefit the sinner, by:
1. Leading him to repentance.
2. Assuring him of forgiveness.
3. Restoring him to righteousness, peace, and joy (ver. 13; Psa_51:12)
of instruction are the way of life". (Pro_6:23 Pro_13:18 Pro_17:10) Sympathy with the holy love of God toward sinners is an essential qualification of a faithful reprover of sin; and as it is God"s mercy that employs agents and means for their restoration, so it is his grace alone that makes them effectual. (Joh_16:8)
And so wide arms Hath goodness infinite, that it receives All who turn to it. (Dante.)
D.
Vers. 1-4. (THE KING"S PALACE.)
The parable of the rich oppressor; or, the poor man"s lamb.
1. This is the first and almost the only parable contained in the Old Testament. There is one instance of a fable of earlier date. (Jud 9:8-15) The former belongs to a higher order of teaching than the latter (Smith"s "Dict. of the Bible," art. "Fable;" Trench, "Notes on the Parables"); and it was employed most perfectly by the great Teacher. Compare his parables of the unmerciful servant, the rich fool, the rich man and Lazarus.
1. It was in part an acted parable (like 2Sa_14:5-7; 1Ki_20:35-43) and was at first regarded by the king as the simple, literal
2. statement of a case in which one of his subjects, a poor man, had suffered wrong at the hands of another, a rich man; and with reference to which the prophet appeared as an advocate on behalf of the former against the latter, seeking justice and judgment. "Nathan, it is likely, used to come to him on such errands, which made this the less suspected. It becomes those who have interest in princes and free access to them to intercede for those that are wronged, that they may have right done them" (Matthew Henry).
3. Its moral and spiritual aim (which is always the chief thing to be considered in the interpretation of a parable) was to set forth the guilt of a rich oppressor, and thereby to awaken the general sense of outraged justice in the king concerning his own conduct.
4. "It is one of those little gems of Divinity that are scattered so plentifullythrough the sacred Scriptures, that sparkle with a lustre, pure and brilliant as the light of heaven, and attest the sacred origin of the wonderful book that contains them" (Blaikie). Consider the guilt of this rich man in the light of
I HIS POSITION compared with that of the poor man, and his relation to him. "There were two men in one city," etc. (vers. 1-3).
1. He had much possessions, "exceeding many flocks and herds."Providence had been very kind to him. He had abundance for personal gratification and princely hospitality and liberality. But the poor man had nothing "save one little ewe lamb," which he valued all the more on that account, and reared amidst his family with the utmost care and tenderness.
2. He had great power, which he might use for good or evil; in fulfilment ofthe Law or in frustration of it; to protect and benefit "the poor and needy" or to oppress and rob them.
3. He dwelt in the same city with the poor man, and was well acquaintedwith his circumstances. He knew the story of the little lamb. The picture is exquisitely drawn by one who was familiar with many such scenes in humble life, and adapted to excite sympathy and pity. The obligations of the rich man toward his "neighbour" are manifest; and they shadow forth the greater obligations of others in a still higher position (vers. 7, 8). Although the king had well nigh absolute power over the property and lives of his subjects, it belonged to the true idea of his office to "reign, command, and punish, as though it were not he that reigned, commanded, and punished, but the One to whom he never ceases to be responsible, and as though he might himself be in the position of any other member of the community and the latter in his own" (Ewald, "Antiquities").
II HIS DISPOSITION. "And there came a traveller," etc. (ver. 4). "The Jewish doctors say, it represents that which they call "the evil disposition," or desire that is in us, which must be diligently watched and observed when we feel its motions. "In the beginning it is but a traveller, but in time it becomes a guest, and in conclusion is the master of the house (Patrick). This is pressing the imagery of the parable too far. Nevertheless, "the sin is traced to its root, viz. insatiable covetousness; this hidden background of all sins" (Keil); sinful, selfish, inordinate desire. (2Sa_11:1-5) It is a "root of bitterness." And in the case supposed what evils it involved!
1. Discontentment with a man"s own possessions, notwithstanding theirabundance "Nature is content with little, grace with less, sin with nothing.
2. Ingratitude toward the Giver of them.
3. Envy of another man on account of some imaginary advantage hepossesses, notwithstanding its comparative insignificance little ewe lamb.
4. Avarice.
5. Voluptuousness.
6. Pride in the possession of power; and its irresponsible exercise. Therewas no sense of personal accountability to God.
7. Vanity or love of display, though at the expense of another an undueregard for outward appearance.
8. Deceitfulness. Did the guest who enjoyed the rich man"s hospitalitydream at whose cost it was provided?
9. Pitilessness and obduracy. "Because he had no pity" (ver. 6).
10. Idolatry (Col_3:5) It is only when sin is viewed in the light of the spirituality Of the commandment, that its "exceeding sinfulness" becomes manifest. (Rom_7:13) "Covetousness is a subtle sin, a dangerous sin, a mother sin, a radical vice, a breach of all the ten commandments" (T. Watson).
III His CONDUCT. "And he spared to take of his own flock," etc. It was:
1. Unjust.
2. Tyrannical.
3. Cruel; "a wanton aggravation of the evils of poverty, humbling the poorman with a sense of injustice and inability to protect himself, deriving a momentary gratification from seeing his neighbour laid low at his feet, as if no lamb was so savoury as that which had been torn from the poor man"s bosom amidst the tears of his children.
4. Lawless and reckless; "a despising of the commandment of the Lord"(ver 9). The poor man"s complaint is unheard. But is you condemn yourself. This is a parable; and I would have you consider whether under another name it is not spoken concerning you. Reserve your rebuke, lest it come back upon yourself" (R. Halley). D.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 7, 9 And the Lord sent Nathan unto David.
2Sa_12:1-14
And the Lord sent Nathan unto David.
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Nathan reproving David
I. Davids sin. David, it appears, to avenge the outrage which bad been perpetrated on his ambassadors by Hanun, the king of the Ammonites, invaded that kings dominions, and, in two pitched battles, defeated both him and his allies with great slaughter. In the following year, as soon as the season permitted, David renewed the war, and followed up his successes still further by sending Joab, and all Israel with him, to lay siege to the royal city of Rabbah, the metropolis of Hanuns kingdom. Instead, however, of accompanying his army on this occasion, according to his usual custom, David unhappily tarried still at Jerusalem; and, whilst there, he appears to have given himself up to a life of sloth and sinful indulgence. For it came to pass, says the sacred historian, in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, where, perhaps, he had been dozing away the afternoon in idleness, instead of spending it in some useful occupation, and walked upon the roof of the kings house. From this elevated position, David saw a woman of great beauty washing herself. But instead of turning away his eyes from beholding vanity, and thus acting the part of an honourable and a modest man, he allowed lust to gain an entrance into his heart, and at last to take full possession of it. Oh, such is the seductive influence, such the tyrannical nature of sin, that, let a man give it but the least encouragement, and it is sure to lead him on, step by step, almost imperceptibly, till at last it compels him, whether he wills or not, to do its bidding. Do you, then, take the advice of a friend, and have nothing to do with the accursed thing. Leave it off, before it be meddled with. For now, mark the next step in his downward career. He sent and inquired after the woman. And although he was plainly told that she was already a married woman; the wife, too, of one of his own best and ablest generals, Uriah the Hittite, and who was actually, at that very moment, jeopardising his own life in the high places of the field to sustain the safety and honour of Davids crown; yet such was the hold which sin had now taken of him that he persisted in sending for her, and at last, after a brief interview, persuades her to forsake the guide of her youth, and to forget the covenant of her God. Oh, who could have thought that David, the mall after Gods own heart, would ever have been guilty of such a crime as this. Little did David think, when he was committing this shocking crime, that his sin would so soon find him out. But so it was; for scarcely had a few months rolled by before Bathsheba perceived that she could no longer conceal her disgrace, and consequently she sends to David, acquainting him with her situation, and in all probability, reminding him of his promise to protect her; for, according to the law of Moses, the adulterer and the adulteress were, both to be put to death. And now, what is to be done? The same evil spirit that prompted him to commit the crime soon suggests a plan for concealing it.
II. What were the means which God took to awaken David to a sense of his wickedness and danger? Did He raise up enemies round about him to lay waste his country and destroy his people? or did He rain down fire and brimstone from heaven, as He once did upon the guilty cities of the plain, in order that He might sweep this wretched monarch from off the earth? Or did He send terrors to take hold of him, and the messengers ,of death to arrest him? No; He sent to him one of his own humble and faithful ministers, in order that he might reason the matter over with him, call his sin to remembrance, and convince him of his guilt. For nearly two full years David appears to have thought nothing more about Uriah. Perhaps he may have thought that, as he had since married the widow, he had made nil the reparation that was required of him. Or he may have supposed that as no other person beside himself was privy to the part which he had taken in Uriahs death, there was no use troubling himself further about the matter. If so, David was greatly mistaken. Yes, there was One Witness to the whole transaction, whom David seems to have lost sight of altogether.
III. What effect Gods message produced on David. Did he fly into a rage with the man of God for thus faithfully discharging his duty? Did he exclaim, with an outburst of angry passion, Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? Or did be call to the governor of the city, and say unto him, Take this fellow away, and put him in the prison, and feed him with bread of affliction and water of affliction? Or did he, like his father Adam, try to shift the blame from himself, and lay it upon the woman? David was so horrified at the picture which Nathan had drawn of his own conduct, and so convinced of its truth, that he exclaimed without a moments hesitation, I have sinned against the Lord.
IV. What lessons we ourselves may gather up from the contemplation of this painful subject.
1. In the first place, then, we may learn that there is no sin beyond the reach of Gods mercy.
2. And, lastly, let no notorious sinner be emboldened, from Davids unhappy fall, to presume on Gods mercy. Let such a one remember that Davids sin was committed but once: he was no habitual transgressor. (E. Harper, B. A.)
Nathan sent to David
I. When?
1. When he had fallen into grievous sin--such sin as, we might well suppose, if we did not know how deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked is the human heart, he would have been incapable of committing.
2. When he was blind, and insensible to his sin. And I think this is something more surprising than even the sin itself. It seems to prove more convincingly the deep depravity of our nature. It is the stamp of a lower humiliation.
II. Wherefore? What was the object of his mission?
1. What might have been expected? Why, surely, that it would be to declare the Divine displeasure--to announce Gods sentence of condemnation against the royal transgressor--to warn him of approaching retribution--to tell him that he had sinned beyond the hope of mercy, and the possibility of restoration, and that there was nothing for him now but a prospect of changeless despair. Gracious and longsuffering as the Lord is, as He is always declared to be in His Word; much as He delights in messages of mercy to His creatures, there have not been wanting in the history of mankind instances of the other kind.
2. But no: it was not as a herald of vengeance that Nathan was sent to David, but as a reprover and convincer of sin, to bring him to repentance, by showing him the baseness of his conduct, the aggravation of his crimes, and the danger to which they had justly exposed him.
III. With what result?
I. 1 answer, first, with but a more startling illustration of the blinding power of sin. We might have thought that, with his ordinarily quick apprehension, David would have perceived at once the point and force of Nathans parable. We should have looked for an immediate self-application of it, and the proper effect thereof; but in doing so, we should only have miscalculated the influence of sinful indulgence in blunting the faculty of moral perception, and deadening all the sensibilities of the soul.
2. The bringing him to a sincere acknowledgment of his offence. This only followed, however, Upon the prophets faithful home-thrust--Thou art the man! This story concerns thee. It needs but to put in the name, and it is then a narration of thy own guilty and heartless conduct towards thy faithful servant Uriah. Thus hast thou sinned against thy unoffending neighbour. Oh! wicked king, there is no excuse for thee. And then David saw himself as the prophet saw him; as, at that moment, God saw him.
3. The leading him to an experience of Gods pardoning grace. For no sooner had David acknowledged his sin, taken to himself the blame of his guilty acts, and prostrated himself a weeping penitent at Gods footstool, than the prophet was commissioned to absolve him from his offences by a declaration of the Divine forgiveness. A God ready to pardon. That is one of the names given to the Lord in the Bible. Was there ever a completer illustration of it than is here supplied? (C. Merry.)
Davids fall
I. The peril of self-indulgence. The heart-rotted tree may stand long in the golden light and summer calm, and crowned with some garniture of green its true condition be unguessed. But let the stormy wind blow and beat upon it, and quickly it will fall. For many years David hail been like a tree planted by the rivers of water than bringeth forth his fruit in his season. He had stood many a blast of temptation unroofed, the more deeply rooted. But self-indulgence, like a permitted rot, had slowly, insidiously, wrought ruin within him, and the strength of his soul became weakness and succumbed to sudden tempestuous temptation. There is ever a sad though secret preparation for such a fall as Davids. There is an inner before an outer fall.
II. The imperative importance of watchfulness. Surely, if any man could have dispensed with watchfulness David was the man. And yet he--patriarch, prophet, saint--fell into the defiling pool of sensuality. We have watchful against us a malignant and pitiless enemy. He has no reverence for the silvered head; for the honour that has gathered to the hoar-haired believer. We need all--and the aged saint, too--to watch against him. We need well to know ourselves. Our physical and mental temperament may expose us to special dangers. Our very excellencies may become our snares. We must watch over them. We dare not glory in them.
III. The dreadful connection of sin with sin. If David had made a covenant with his eyes he had not looked. But he looked, and the look was sin. And that one sin opened the way for many. To lust he added craft, to craft treason, to treason murder. And this is David! Lord, what is man? No sin stands alone. Admit one, a whole brood presses urgent, irresistible upon its heels. It is the little rift that widens till the music of a holy life is mute. It is the little pitted speck that, rotting inwards, slowly spoils the fruit of useful character. Lie darkens into lies. The one theft into another. Davids one sin into many.
IV. The awful possibilities of self-deception. For mouths, for a year, David went on unconscious of his guilt. How blinding is self-partiality! It is really prodigious, as Bishop Butler says, to see a man, before so remarkable for virtue and piety, going on deliberately from adultery to murder with the same cool contrivance, and, from what appears, with as little disturbance, as a man would endeavour to prevent the ill consequences of a mistake he had made in any common matter. That total insensibility of mind with respect to those horrid crimes, after the commission of them, manifestly shows that he did some way or other delude himself, and this could not be with respect to the crimes themselves, they were so manifestly of the grossest kind. Oh, the possibilities of self-deception! The liar may appear true, the dishonest honest, the vile pure. So for awhile; but not for long. The day of self-revelation is at hand. There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.
V. The blessedness of true repentance. The Lord sent Nathan unto David. By a touching apologue the wise prophet drew David to pass unconscious verdict upon himself.
VI. The irrevocable character of a sinful deed. David was forgiven. But he could not escape the bitter temporal fruit of his sin. To lifes very end it was as gravel in his teeth, as acrid ashes in his mouth. A sinful deed may be pardoned; but it cannot be recalled, and on it will go its desolating way. No tears of David could wash away the guilty past. Dad deeds live when the doer is dead. This Sill of David has caused from age to age the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. Stand in awe and sin not. The lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin; and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death. (G. T. Coster.)
Davids sin and Nathans parable
I. The occasion upon which the monarch disgraced himself. II, the utterance of the parable. The touching beauty of this little apologue cannot be passed carelessly by. Its appeal forces its way to the most sensitive centres of our feeling. But the general shrewdness of its conception is heightened by the fact that it entered at once into the historic experience of this king. He knew what it was to be poor; he knew what it was to have and to love one little ewe-lamb. And when Nathan told him that the rich, mean neighbour had stolen and killed the creature which the poor man cherished in his bosom as a daughter his anger was at its height.
III. The explication of his skilful parable was instantaneous: And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. The king must have been startled beyond all power of self-control. How rapid was the transition of feeling through which he passed! One minute he was on his feet in all the flush of indignation at anothers sin, fairly exulting in the proud sense of unutterable contempt at injustice so apparent and so unmitigated in its foul stroke. The next minute he perceived the countenance of Nathan changing towards him. Around came that long scornful finger, which had been pointing at an imaginary offender; and now in reply to the implied inquiry for that offenders name, its index slowly reached his own face, and then the sober words were spoken: Thou art the man. Could his discomfiture have been more complete? Could Nathans triumph of rebuke have been more successful?
IV. lessons of present instruction from this parable. Sin levels the loftiest man to the lowest rank. Zeal for God lifts the lowliest man into a vantage unquestioned.
1. Observe, then, that in all cases conscience is the arbiter in the wrong, and must be the centre of aim in the reproof.
2. Observe, that absolute rectitude is the only standard to be admitted in all processes of rebuke.
3. In the third place, observe that tenderness is the dominant spirit in all truly Scriptural, or even successful, rebuke.
4. Observe, in the fourth place, that courageous fidelity is the measure of all Christian duty in administering rebuke. Are we up to this standard in helping each other? Has not the day of honest fraternal rebuke pretty much passed by? And are we not ourselves to blame for many of those detections to the common cause which make such sudden scandal? Another question, quite akin to this, is likewise suggested by this theme: What ought to be expected of every faithful ministry in a time like that we live in? Is there any sin so peculiarly delicate that the messenger of God is debarred from saying, Thou art the man? (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
The parable of Nathan
The introduction to the parable must not be overlooked, for in it we are taught that the first step to repentance springs from the Divine favour. The Lord sent Nathan. The man who has fallen into a pit and broken his limbs must have help from without. It is useless for him to talk of climbing out unaided, somebody must come and lift him out and place him again upon the spot from which he fell. The first step towards recovery must come from above him. In considering the parable itself, notice:--
I. The analogy and contrast which it sets forth as existing between David and Uriah.
1. The analogy.
(1) The men in the parable were on an equality; in some respects they were fellow-men and fellow-citizens. There were two men in one city. So David and Uriah, although one was a king and the other a subject, were on a level on the common ground of humanity, and were both subject to the laws, political, social, and religious, which had been given by God to the nation which regarded Jerusalem as the seat of government.
(2) David was by birth a member of the highly-favoured nation to whom God had given laws, and Uriah, by choice, was a citizen of the city where dwelt David the king, who, more than any other man, was bound to obey the law of his nation and of his God.
(3) There is analogy in their qualities. They were both courageous, valiant men. David had, from his youth, been noted for this characteristic; from his shepherd-day when he slew the lion and the bear, up to the present time his bravery had been unquestioned. Uriah the Hittite was a man of like spirit in this respect, and his very bravery had been used by his master to compass his death. It was well known to David that if Uriah was placed in the forefront of the battle he would hold his post or die.
2. The parable also sets forth the contrast in the two men--the one rich and the other poor.
(1) The kings position made it possible for him to indulge his unlawful desires without hindrance. The position of Uriah obliged him to submit to his masters will. This inequality aggravated Davids crime.
(2) The parable seems to hint at a further contrast. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: but the poor man had nothing save one little ewe lamb. David had many wives; the narrative implies that Uriah had but one. His love was therefore deeper, because purer, than that of David. His strong affection was an emotion to which the king was a comparative stranger, even as the rich man in the parable could not estimate, his poor neighbours affection for his only lamb. For the lawless passion of David cannot be placed upon a level with the pure love of Uriah. The one is life and the other death. The river which keeps within its channel is a blessing to the country through which it flows; but the same river, when it bursts its banks and overflows the land, becomes a means of desolation and destruction. So it is with lawful affection and lawless passion.
II. The effect of the parable and its application upon David.
1. It awakened strong emotion: Davids anger was greatly kindled against the man. (v. 5.) This effect was the result of looking at the crime from a distance.
2. It revealed great self-ignorance. The knowledge most indispensable in life is self-knowledge; a man who does not possess this is an ignorant man, whatever are his other requirements. Knowledge is said to be power, and the knowledge of oneself is the greatest power.
3. But the effect of the application of the parable is a remarkable illustration of the power of conscience. Some men do everything upon a large scale. Their emotions are deep, their sins are great, and so are their virtues. The captain of a vessel of large dimensions which carries a rich cargo, has a heavier weight of responsibility than he has who has only the charge of a small craft. If he pilot the vessel safely into harbour he has the more honour, but if she gets wrecked the disaster makes a deeper impression.
III. The effect of Davids confession upon God. Confession of sin to a human friend against whom we have offended will often bring an assurance of forgiveness. The good parent makes it indispensable before the child is restored to its position and favour. So is it in the government of God. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (Joh_1:9.)
1. The path of duty is the path that leads not into temptation. If David had been at the head of his army at this time it is likely that he would have escaped this dark stain upon his life. A brook is kept pure while it is in motion, but if its waters were to be stopped from flowing they would become stagnant.
2. That tendencies to sin, though not on the surface, are yet latent in the depths of the heart. To the eye of a stranger a powder-vessel may look very trim and clean and safe, but the black powder is there in the hold, only needing a single spark to make its awful power felt.
3. Impurities in the springs of thought will be revealed in the streams of action.
4. Although sin is forgiven, some of its consequences must remain. The Lord hath put away thy sin, but the sword shall never depart from thine house.
5. The parable, and the fact that gave rise to it, lead us to observe--
(1) That impartial reason is ever ready to condemn any flagrant iniquity. There is as discernible a difference between good and evil as between white and black, when nothing interposes to obstruct the sight, or misrepresent the object.
(2) The prejudices of interest and lust may, and do hinder men from discerning, or at least distinguishing in practice between right and wrong, even in the plainest cases. Such was most apparently the case with David.
(3) Although men do sometimes suffer themselves to commit gross sins, in open contradiction to their own inward light, yet all notorious iniquity stands condemned by the universal verdict of mankind. (R. Moss, D. D.)
Awakened and awed
We see here--
I. The man left to himself. Like other servants of God whose lives are recorded in the Scriptures, we find David in times of sin withdrawing from communion with God, loving his own way, hugging his pet sin. David estranged himself from his God, and he soon sinks lower and lower. Sinful weakness he had been shown before, but this is a mean, selfish crime. No one withdraws trust from God and prospers. As flowers live in and by the rays of the sun, so the graces of the soul need the favour of God. No agony of remorse is so keen as that of the child of God over sinful pleasures indulged. More helpless than a rudderless vessel in the Maelstrom is the Christian who abandons himself to serve sin even for a season.
1. David left to himself makes a sorry self indeed. A further evidence of increasing guilt is the manner of his treatment of the prisoners of war (v. 31.) It was cruel in the extreme, unnecessarily cruel. So unlike David. Ah! biting, goading him was that sense of sin which he could not shake off. Ill at ease, he cares not what suffering he causes. His temper unrestrained, any savage cruelty is possible. These excitements so eagerly sought only serve to show the unceasing demands conscience made upon him. Can any man venture to say David was happy? We are not left to conjecture. Psa_51:1-19., written twelve months after his sin, reveals his inmost thoughts at this time (as also Psa_32:1-11.), and this psalm was delivered to the chief musician for public use before the sacred history was written.
2. David is yet in his sin. How dulled his vision, or the parable had needed no explanatory application! How forcibly this fatal power of sin is brought home to us, and daily! Illustrations of this deceitfulness of sin abound. Judges pronounce sentence on poor fallen girls while indulging in the sin themselves! Workmen pronounce hard, biting sentences upon those who bring down prices by undue competition, yet go and take the situation offered by the foreign competitor without a thought of the inconsistency. Nothing blinds like self-love.
II. The curse Nathan utters, and chastisement. Former gracious dealings are brought to mind. There was horsing which God withheld from David. He came to the kingdom when God saw wise, and with unsparing hand had God dealt out blessing. He had disregarded the responsibilities which his office brought and despised the commandment of the Lord!
1. The adaptation of the retribution to the offence is noticeable--a principle in the moral government of God of which there are many instances in Scripture. Jacob deceived his father, and his sons deceive him. He cheats his brother, and is cheated by his uncle Laban. This is remarkably seen in the after-days of David; and while the form of the chastisement appears arbitrary, it is not, for it comes by way of natural consequence of the sins itself.
2. The babe dies. There was wise reason why it should. That David, whose parental love was strong, felt this blow keenly the history reveals. He watched the child die, knowing it would die, knowing it would die because of him. (H. E. Stone.)
Davids great sin, and Gods greater grace
When Alexander, King of Macedon, and one of the few conquerors of the world, had his portrait taken, it is said, he sat with his face resting on his fingers, as though he were in a profound reverie, but really that he might hide from the observers vision an unsightly sear. Our Bible always keeps the sitters finger off the scars. It paints the full face with flawless detail--beauty and blotches, saintliness and scare, all, and in all. But, after all, is it not a true human instinct and a healthy canon of art that puts the finger on the scars of the face? Why perpetuate the: memorials of deformity? What need to recite the repulsive story of human wrongdoing? Is it not far saner, as our Emerson maintains, to sing the glories of the good, and sink the bad; to chant the praises of virtue, and cover vice with the mantle of concealment? Why should the artist dip his brush in undiluted ugliness, when so many pictures of finished beauty invite his skill? Surely it is no sign of force of intellect or kindliness of spirit to explore the warts on a lace radiant with beneficent expression! Besides, may you not multiply iniquity by exhibiting it, palliate wrong by disclosing its riotous growths in men of exceptional holiness, and weaken the yielding spirit in combat with temptation by supplying excuses for self-indulgent failure, and elastic resistance to desired defeat? All that depends first, upon the spirit in which the biographer conceives and carries out his design; and next, and mainly, upon the purpose which dominates every part of his painting. You may tell a mans faults for the mean end of gratifying a prurient and debased curiosity; or to palliate and excuse a biting sense of personal wrong-doing; or to compel a low and despairing view of human life; or to give food to a jaundiced and self-condemned egotism that cannot sit still in the presence of greatness, but must, perforce, pelt it with any discoverable stones, picked up with facile fingers out of any mud, by that envy which finds such hospitable entertainment in most of our minds. But the Hebrew historians account of Davids great sin is at once lifted far away, and beyond the touch of all such criticism, by the strenuous and insistent moral purpose of the writer, by his clear consciousness that he is narrating a part of the real, though sad, history of the Kingdom of God; and so forcing a series of foul and atrocious crimes into the ranks of the preachers of righteousness, the beneficent angels of warning and rebuke, hope and courage; the trumpet-tongued heralds of human repentance and Divine forgiveness, perfected and crowned by merciful renewal and enlargment of soul.
(1) It has set in the irrefutable logic of facts the truth, that increasing and incredible mischiefs follow the violation of the laws of social purity, in monarch as well as subject, in the high-placed as well as the lowly, in the children of genius and of goodness as well as in the offspring of sensualists and vice.
(2) It has proclaimed that woman is not a satanic bait for mans soul, but a minister to his purity and happiness, and that the saintliest men imperil their slowly built integrity, and fling into the depths of the sea the precious jewel of their character, if they fail to maintain an exalted conception of woman as woman, and to pay to her individual soul the homage of a genuine reverence and an inflexible justice.
(3) In the lengthened tale of the consequences of this trespass, and the series of awful tragedies crowded into Davids life from this fatal hour, it has revealed the essential falseness of the polygamous basis of family life, repeated the Divine decree that true marriage is of soul with soul, and not of flesh with flesh, and that disaster sooner or later must come to the home and the State of the people who fly in the face of that eternal rule.
(4) It is also a pathetic and powerful enforcement of the law discovered in the dawn of the worlds life; that it is impossible to hush up a solitary lapse. Sin finds us out, if only by dragging other sins in its train. David adds lying to lust; treachery to lying; and murder to all, and at the last, is all but drowned in the swines trough of sensualism and iniquity.
(5) But the principal message of this chapter m the life of Israels greatest hero is that Davids great sin is met and mastered by Gods greater grace. Where sin abounded, grace much more abounds. But after the best is said that can be said for these fruitful issues, effected by the dews and rains and sunshine of redemption, from such sorry seed by a wonder-working God, still the sin itself is so bad, so heinous, so despicable and aggravated, that it will not bear telling with any sort of patience and ordinary self-control. It makes ones blood boil that a man such as he, so strong and self-disciplined in his youth, heroic and magnanimous in his manhood, fervid and original in his love and worship of the Eternal; wide in his culture, and clear in his vision--that he, David, the poet, the prophet, the patriot, the soldier-king, the saint, at fifty, or maybe at fifty-eight years of age, should slip back into such foul mire, and bedabble and bedraggle his soul through such diabolical vices! It fairly takes ones breath away! Why! he breaks nearly all the commands of God at once! He, a man and a father, forgets his duty to himself as a ruler, and permits the furious steeds of passion to ride rough-shod over all the sanctities of the home! He, a king, commits treason against a subject he is bound to protect! He, a soldier, once so sensitive that he would not touch the skirt of the king with his sword, pens a letter that takes the life of one of his most chivalrous comrades! He, the shepherd and leader of his people, lifted out of the sheepfold to the throne, to guide Gods flock, plunges headlong into the lowest of villanies! Oh! how are the mighty fallen! Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Undisturbed prosperity for a score years has relaxed the kings vigilance, shrivelled and shrunk his moral fibre, lulled his conscience to sleep, enervated his dedicated and disciplined will. He has had no changes, and so has forgotten God and his vocation. Ease has made him effeminate. Luxury has generated idleness, for even now he is exposing himself to temptation by tarrying at Jerusalem, when he should be at the wars. Reiterated excuses for slight neglects of duty, and satisfaction with a withered ideal, have prepared for this awful catastrophe. It is not well for any of us to escape difficulty, combat, and criticism. We must not forget the perils of advancing years. Age has its dangers not less than youth. Necessity is a better servant to virtue than we usually imagine. Few of us can resist the seductions of ease and affluence, or conquer the fearful temptations born of having nothing to do. A man should bear the yoke in his youth, and if he is wise he will not be in a hurry to put it off, but will die under its tightening grip. The true soldier aims to be faithful unto death. Age is no dispensation from watchfulness, and length of years no guarantee of safety. The oldest of us must watch and pray, lest we blunt the spiritual sensibility, become the prey of vulgar ambitions, and allow the cleansing fires of self-risking enthusiasms to die down and die out. If David falls after half-a-centurys experience of Gods mercy, who is safe? But sad as all this is--and we make no apology whatever for Davids sin; he does not; Nathan does not; the most distressing and deadly feature of these revolting transgressions is not the plot to murder; the cold-blooded treachery; the gross lust; black and hideous as they are, but his callosity, his hardness of heart, his seeming supercilious consciousness of no sin. Think of it. For a whole year the guilty monarch lives on and on, face to face with the memorials of his sin; remorse mostly asleep; dull torpor occupying the contested throne of his heart: his bruised soul unrelieved by the throes of a genuine repentance and a full confession. Surely the heart is deceitful above all things, and capable of desperate wickedness, and inexpungable stolidity! Who call: know it! Its self-delusions are unsearchable, and its devious diabolical ways past finding out! But Davids superficial apathy and coveted hardness cannot last, God will not let it. He will bring the evil to the light, and pierce the sinners soul through and through with the two-edged sword of many sorrows, that He may east out the deadly iniquity. The kings secret crime leaks out. That much decried Minister of Justice, Gossip, passes along the bazaars, and on to the palace, and to the schools of the seers, until it startles and shocks the soul of the young prophet of God, Nathan. He cannot rest, The bitter tidings till hint with sorrow. The burden of the Lord is upon him. Gods anointed must be rebuked, and his fearful doom declared. There can be no paltering with evil because it is done by a king, no truckling to wrongdoing because he who commits it has the power of life and death, no veiling a monstrous iniquity from sight because it is committed by one of exalted place and of exalted character. God and His prophets are no respectors of persons. They witness for stern justice and for rigid and inflexible law; and the higher the rank of the sinner the more urgent the swift exposure of his sin. Strange brain-book this of ours! It seems as though we wrote a page in our life, and then the wind of circumstance rose high and blew it over, and hid it from our sight, never again to be read by us or ours; but God comes by His prophet, His Nathan, His gift of Revelation, and His strong fingers open the sealed leaves and turn them back, and the blotted register is held before our startled eyes, and we are compelled to look Straight on what we have written, until it seems as though the flashing light of God would burn it into our souls, and make us feel the horrible meanness and bald baseness of our low lives. That penitence was no cheap and easy lip-cry, God be merciful to me a sinner. It was the agony of all inexorably tortured soul; incensed against himself as one who had nourished a serpent in his heart, only that it might discharge its full venom upon him. Bitterly he cries and sobs out his grief, writhes and groans under the intolerable pressure of his sin, reels and staggers from the successive shocks of his anguish, his very bones wasting away amidst his moaning, his life-juices drying up through the burning fevers of ms soul, his days wretched, his nights sleepless, his prayer one moan; O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this sill and death. God creates such penitence for sin by Revelation. Sin does not of itself generate repentance. It warps the judgment, hardens the heart, distorts the vision, shrivels the will, slays the man. It is not in sin to cure itself. Nor will penalties redeem and restore. Punishments do not of themselves beget soul-agony for sin as sin--for sins of the thought and the imagination, the will and the affections. George Eliot says in Daniel Deronda: Lives are enlarged in different ways. I daresay some would never get their, eyes opened if it were not for a violent shock from the consequences of their own actions. Thank God that does happen sometimes, but human story tells us they are extremely few who are chastened and enriched merely by suffering the penalties of their own wrongdoing. Such issues beget despair, and lead a Judas to suicide; but alone, they rarely, if ever, lead to life. They may accumulate self-reproach, discover the blundering stupidity of all sin, sour and embitter the temper, and crush and grind the man to powder; but it is God in His prophets Who begets a divinely cleansing repentance, a fierce and pure hatred of wrong as wrong, and a renewed dedication to goodness and righteousness. It always takes a gospel to make a penitent. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses. The vision of Divine love breaks the hardest heart. The infinite pathos of the Cross touches the spirit with softer power for contrition and for comfort than the song of the angels at Bethlehem. God quickens and enlarges a thorough repentance with His free and instant forgiveness, and crowns it with swift peace, soul enlargement, and hallowed progress. A broken and a contrite spirit is His most coveted home, and the souls of the penitent have been His chosen dwelling-place in all generations. There is icy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth; then how glad and full and deep the delight, when the heart of a David sobs with grief over his sin; the long estrangement from God is ended, and the right spirit is once more supreme! The Lord hath also put away thy sin. But note, although God forgives the sin, He does not remit the penalty. He cannot. Infinite in power and resistless in will, He does not He cannot cut off, at once and for ever, the issues of Davids iniquities. Wrong has an indestructible vitality, and a prodigious reproductiveness independently of him who did it. Most appalling is this tragic feature of our mysterious life! Never is that penalty lifted wholly out, of Davids career. It dogs him to the very end. It is there in the death of Bathshebas child. It is there in the thickening plots of the palace; in the crime of Ammon; in the revolt of Absalom; and in the wickedness of his children. It is there ill the air of the court laden with his infecting impurity; there in the whips to scourge him, made of the knotted cords of his pleasant vices. But forgiveness is not all David seeks; nor is it all he obtains. The greater grace of God triumphs over the great sin of David in making it contributive to his spiritual enlargement, the clearing and expansion of his conceptions of sin, of responsibility, of personality, of God, and of holiness. He recovers his original attitude of sincerity and simplicity, of uprightness of purpose, and of straight and steadfast vision; and from his own failure gains the clearest expressions of personal and individual sin the Bible contains. His sin accentuates his sense of personality in God and in self. Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight. Let us adore the grace of God that carries on the upbuilding of men, not alone by shepherds tasks and patriots perils, courtiers duties and singers psalms, but also, and surprisingly by the ministry of sin, converting failures in human purpose and foibles in human lives, into goads and beacons, and transmuting even the victories of low animalism and blinding sense into whips and thongs driving the offending Adam out of the swines field and into the pastures of the flock of God. The fact is as undeniable as it is glorious. Speaking to M. de Lesseps on the occasion of his admission to the Academy, M. Renan said: You have that supreme gift that, like faith, works miracles. And the reason of your ascendancy is this--that men see in you a heart that sympathises with all that is human, and a veritable passion for ameliorating the lot of all mankind. They find in you that pity for the multitude which is the mainspring in all men of great practical talent . . . You are a master of the supreme art which consists in knowing how to do good with evil, and get the great out of the little. And is it not also one of the chief problems of science to convert the waste products of the world into the service of mankind? Has not chemistry, within the last thirty years, coaxed a whole world of beautiful colours out of the refuse of coal-tar? But in all this, man is only the imitator of Him Who makes the wrath of men to praise Him. He sayeth to the uttermost. Limit, there is none to His forgiveness. Barrier does not exist to His conquering grace. David is the Saul of Tarsus of the Hebrew Church. It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that turn to Him with a broken and contrite heart, showing mercy to the penitent, be they never so guilty; and saving David, that in him as chief, God might show forth His long-suffering for an ensample to them that should hereafter believe on Him to eternal life. Let no man despair. (J. Clifford.)
Of sell-examination
Self-examination may be called an arraignment of ourselves at our own bar, according to that word of our Eucharist Service: Judge, therefore, yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged of the Lord. It is easy--fatally easy--with self-examination as with prayer, to allow the exercise to be drawn down from its high moral and spiritual aim to the level of a form. But while we continue it, let us strive to throw reality and life into it by regarding the great duty on a large, comprehensive, and spiritual scale. Consider, first, the necessity for all of us, in respect both of our sins and of our good works, of an exercise of like self-examination. This necessity arises from the fact, so distinctly stated in Scripture, that the heart is deceitful above all things, and that he that trusteth in his own heart--in its dictates respecting himself and his own spiritual condition--is a fool. It has pleased God to illustrate this cardinal truth by two grand examples, one in the Old and one in the New Testament. It must have been by trust in the subtle evasions and plausible shifts of his own heart that David, after committing two of the worst crimes of which our nature is capable, so long contrived to keep his conscience quiet, but at length was convicted of the desperate folly of severely condemning in another man the very faults which, in an infinitely aggravated form, he had been palliating and excusing in himself. And it was by trusting in the assurances which his heart gave him of his own strong attachment to his Master, that St. Peter, secure of himself, was betrayed into the weakness and folly of denying Christ. May we say that, while all characters are liable to the snare of self-deception, those are more particularly exposed to it who, like St. Peter and David, are persons of keen sensibilities, warm temperaments, quick affections? But bow shall we bring home to ourselves the dangerousness of trusting, without due examination, to the verdict of our own hearts? We will do so by supposing a parallel ease ins matter, where we are all peculiarly apt to be cautious and suspicious--the goods of this world. Suppose, then, that the chief agent in some great speculation is a man wire, though most untrustworthy, has all the art of conciliating trust. Suppose him to be fluent, fair-spoken, prepossessing in manners and appearance, and to be especially plausible in glossing over a financial difficulty. Advance one more step in the hypothesis, and suppose him to be a private friend of many of those who are embarked with him in the same speculation; allied to some of them by marriage, and, more or less, in habits of intimacy with all. If such a person is at the head of affairs, and entrusted with the administration of the funds contributed by all, it is evident that he might impose upon the contributors to almost any extent. Now the peril of such trust in worldly matters supplies a very fair image of the peril of a still more foolish and groundless trust in spiritual things. Our hearts are notoriously most untrustworthy informants ill any case where we are ourselves interested. It is not only Scripture which assevers this. We confess it ourselves, and re-echo the verdict of Scripture, when we say of any slight matter, with which we happen to be mixed up, I am an interested party, and therefore I had better not be a judge. What frightful arrears may we be running up, unawares to ourselves, if we do not sharply check and suspiciously watch this heart, who administers for us the account between us and God! The first step in real self-examination is to be fully aware of the deceitfulness of the heart, and to pray against it, watch against it, and use every possible method of counteracting it. But what means can we use? We offer a few practical suggestions in answer to this question.
1. As regards, our acknowledged sins. We must remember that their hatefulness, and aggravations, if they were publicly confessed, might very probably be recognised by every one but ourselves, the perpetrators. There are certain loathsome diseases, which are offensive and repulsive in the highest degree to every one but the patient. And there is a close analogy between the spiritual frame of man and his natural; if the moral disease be your own--rooted in your character, clinging to your own heart, it never can affect you with the same disgust as if it were another mans.
2. But the probe of self-examination needs to be applied to the better, as well as to the worse parts of our conduct. The natural heart is an adept in flatteries, not only suggesting excuses for the evil, but also heightening the colours of the good which, by Gods grace, is in us. Where conduct stands the test of self-examination, the motives of it should be called in question. We must do in regard of ourselves what we may never do in regard of others--suspect that an unsound motive may underlie a fair conduct. Certain proprieties and regularities of behaviour, whether devotional or moral, are secured by deference to the prevailing opinions and habits of society, as is shown sometimes by the fact that, when we are in foreign parts, and no longer under this restraint, those proprieties and regularities are not so carefully maintained. Many good actions are done, more or less, because they are in keeping with a mans position, conciliate credit to him, gain him the praise of others. Works of usefulness and social (and even religious) improvement may be undertaken, more or less, from that activity of mind which is inherent in some characters, because naturally we cannot bear to be standing still, and are constitutionally unfitted for a studious, contemplative life. To have probed their own wounds, and pored over their own inflamed and envenomed frames, would have availed the poisoned Israelites nothing, unless, after such a survey of their misery, they had lifted their eyes to the brazen serpent. Look unto Him, therefore, and be ye healed. (E. M. Goulburn, D. D.)
Nathans parable
I. The parable as based upon fact. There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor. The rich man had many flocks and herds: the poor man had one ewe lamb. And the rich man, in a case of emergency, instead of taking a lamb out of his own flock, killed the one ewe lamb of the poor man. If that never occurred we must know it. Did it ever occur? It is the thing that is occurring every day. It is the infinite danger of wealth that it becomes oppressive, cruel, thoughtless, selfish. There is a sanctified wealth; there is a gracious social position; there is a condescending royalty. But why should it be remarked that such should be the case? Simply because of the almost innate tendency of men to use wealth with cruelty and selfishness. The poor man feels the cold wind first. The destruction of the poor man is his poverty. Wealth when it oppresses carries with it its own condemnation. Wealth when it is used as a means of succouring men, helping the true and the good is doing the work of God. But we are dealing with something below all that we now know as personal facts--namely, with principles, mysteries, with that whole region, almost undiscovered, of motive, passion, impulse that never can be explained adequately in words. On the other hand, a man is not necessarily a virtuous citizen because he has only one ewe lamb. Let us be impartial.
II. The parable as a method of teaching. The parable was a favourite educational instrument in Eastern nations. There were many parable-makers in Oriental lands. But where are the parables equal to those which are to be found in the Bible? Balaam had a parable, Jotham had a parable; Nathan has a parable, and others in the Old Testament now and again come very near to the line of parable, but in proportion as we discover the parable to be beautiful and true we see in it the Spirit of the living God--the Eternal Force--the Divine Quantity. But when we come to the teaching of Jesus Christ all the other parables fall off into dim perspective; and after he laid down that instrument was it ever taken up again? Jesus Christ often fetched a compass--and he fetched it by such a sweep, by such a reach of mind, that the men upon whom his attention was fastened little suspected, until after the completion of the parable, that they were the objects of his judgment and condemnation. This is masterly preaching--to be personal without the individuals knowing that we are such; to get up a whole statement, coloured in every hue of heaven, sharp with all the pungency of criticism, and for men afterwards to wake up to the fact that the preacher was meaning none other than themselves. What applies to Christs parables, and to all others of the same quality, applies to the whole revelation of God.
III. The parable as a practical revelation of Gods justice. We have seen that the thing which David did displeased the Lord. Does God treat the sin lightly? He says: The sword shall never depart from thine house; across every bright summer that shines upon thee there shall be a great bar of blackness; when the birds sing to thee thou shalt be constrained to punctuate their songs with memories of remorse; when thou dost lift the flagon to thy lips the wine shall leave behind it a poisonous taste; when thou liest down a thorn shall puncture thee: thou shalt never escape from this deed of wickedness. Whilst, therefore, the mocker is eager to quote as against the Bible the sin of David, if he be a just man as well as a jiber he ought to quote the judgment pronounced by God, and to see how true is the doctrine of eternal torment even in relation to this life. This parable, too, shows us mans responsibility. David is not allowed to escape on the ground of being overtaken in a fault. Kings ought to be their own subjects. The greater the man, the greater should be the saint. The greater the opportunities we have had of education and culture of every kind, the severer should be public criticism upon our lapses and iniquities, To whom much has been given, from him shall much be expected. He who knoweth his Lords will and doeth it not shall be beaten with many stripes. (J. Parker, D,D.)
Nathan as a true prophet
Nathan here presents the image of a prophet in its noblest and most attractive form. Boldness, tenderness, inventiveness, and tact were combined in such admirable proportions that a prophets functions, if always discharged in a similar manner with equal discretion, would have been acknowledged by all to be purely beneficent. In his; interposition there is a kind of ideal moral beauty. In the schools of the prophets he doubtless held the place which St. Ambrose afterwards held in the minds of priests for the exclusion of the Emperor Theodosius from the church of Milan after the massacre of Thessalonica. (W. Smith, D. D.)
Nathan the parabolist
Krummacher tells us how the wise Nathan learned the benefit of parables. He sought to instruct men by putting on coarse garments, and using harsh words; but men ran from him and left him vexed and alone. After a miserable night he was led by the spirit of God to a pomegranate tree, bearing flowers and fruit at the same time. He contemplated it, and saw the fruit concealed among the leaves. Then the word of the Lord came from the pomegranate tree, saying: Behold, Nathan! thus nature promises the delicious fruits by the simple flower, and offers it from the shade of the leaves concealing her hand. Nathan was cheered, and henceforth taught by parables, winning many to the ways of truth.
Reproof by portrait
Leech, the, celebrated artist and caricaturist, is said to have had an effective method of reprimanding his children. If their faces were distorted with anger, or a rebellious temper, or a sullen mood, he took out his sketch-book, transferred their lineaments to paper, and showed them, to their own confusion, how ugly naughtiness was. (Sunday Companion.)
The force of private admonition
Great is the benefit of conference and private admonition. Luther was much helped this way by Staupicius; Galeacius by Peter Martyr, Junius by a countryman of his not far from Florence; Senarclaeus by John Diazius; Latimer by blessed St. Bilney, as he styleth him; Dr. Taylor by that angel of God, John Bradford, who counted that hour lost wherein he had not done some good with his hand, pen, or tongue. Private admonition, saith one, is the pastors privy purse, as princes have theirs, besides their public disbursements. It repented good Mr. Hiron, and troubled him on his deathbed, that he had been so backward to it, and barren of it. (J. Trapp.)
Definite teaching as to sin
Delivering publicly a charge to a newly-ordained minister, Robert Hall said to him: Be not afraid of devoting whole sermons to particular parts of moral conduct and religious duty. It is impossible to give right views of them unless you dissect characters, and describe particular virtues and vices. The works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit must be distinctly pointed out. To preach against sin in general without descending to particulars may lead many to complain of the evil in their hearts, while at the same time they are awfully inattentive to the evil of their conduct. How wise is this! We need to be specific as to home-sins, business-sins, social-sins, church-sins, pew-sins, and pulpit-sins; for to lay bare definite evil is half-way towards its removing. No preaching was ever more pointed and personal and practical than that of our Lord Jesus Christ, and those who heard Him knew He meant themselves if no other. (H. O. Mackey.)
Reproving without offending
It is told us of Henry Martyn that lie was a man with a wonderful power of telling men of their faults, and bringing them to a right mind, and yet never offending them. Someone said to him: How do you manage to tell them their faults without offending them? He replied, I never go to another to tell him his fault, until I have been down on my knees before God, and seen that, but for His present grace, I should be in the same fault myself. That is the spirit of meekness. Yes, blessed are the meek who will get down, just as Henry Martyn did; he got down on to his knees, and that is the best way to get to tim ground, and then from that level lie spoke to the one who was in fault. When he got up he lifted his brother with him. (H. Brooke, M. A.)
Preaching to the conscience
Robert Wodrow tells a story of a certain merchant who came from London to St. Andrews in Fife, where he heard first the great and worthy Mr. Blair preach, next he heard the great Rutherford preach, and afterward Mr. Dickson. When lie came back to London his friends asked him what news he had from Scotland. He answered, he had very great and good news to tell them. They wondered much what they could be, for tie was before that time a man altogether a stranger to true religion. He told them he heard one Mr. Blair preach at St. Andrews; and describing his features and the stature of his body, he said, That man showed me the majesty of God--which was Mr. Robert Blairs peculiar talent. Then, added he, I afterwards heard a little fair man preach--Mr. Rutherford and that man showed me the loveliness of Christ. Then I came and heard at Irvine a well-favoured, proper old man, with a long beard--which was the famous Mr. Dickson--and that man showed me all my heart; for he was most famed of any man of his time to speak to cases of conscience. (Alexander Smellie.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 2Sa_12:1-12; 2Sa_12:26-31.
CHAPTER X V.
DAVID AND NATHAN.
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2Sa_12:1-12; 2Sa_12:26-31.
IT is often the method of the writers of Scripture, when the stream of public history has been broken by a private or personal incident, to complete at once the incident, and then go back to the principal history, resuming it at the point at which it was interrupted. In this way it sometimes happens (as we have already seen) that earlier events are recorded at a later part of the narrative than the natural order would imply. In the course of the narrative of David's war with Ammon, the incident of his sin with Bathsheba presents itself. In accordance with the method referred to, that incident is recorded straight on to its very close, including the birth of Bathsheba's second son, which must have occurred at least two years later. That being concluded, the history of the war with Ammon is resumed at the point at which it was broken off. We are not to suppose, as many have done, that the events recorded in the concluding verses of this chapter (2Sa_12:26-31) happened later than those recorded immediately before. This would imply that the siege of Rabbah lasted for two or three years - a supposition hardly to be entertained; for Joab was besieging it when David first saw Bathsheba, and there is no reason to suppose that a people like the Ammonites would be able to hold the mere outworks of the city for two or three whole years against such an army as David's and such a commander as Joab. It seems far more likely that Joab's first success against Rabbah was gained soon after the death of Uriah, and that his message to David to come and take the citadel in person was sent not long after the message that announced Uriah's death.
In that case the order of events would be as follows: After the death of Uriah, Joab prepares for an assault on Rabbah. Meanwhile, at Jerusalem, Bathsheba goes through the form of mourning for her husband, and when the usual days of mourning are over David hastily sends for her and makes her his wife. Next comes a message from Joab that he has succeeded in taking the city of waters, and that only the citadel remains to be taken, for which purpose he urges David to come himself with additional forces, and thereby gain the honour of conquering the place. It rather surprises one to find Joab declining an honour for himself, as it also surprises us to find David going to reap what: another had sowed. David, however, goes with "all the people," and is successful, and after disposing of the Ammonites he returns to Jerusalem. Soon after Bathsheba's child is born; then Nathan goes to David and gives him the message that lays him in the dust. This is not only the most natural order for the events, but it agrees best with the spirit of the narrative. The cruelties practiced by David on the Ammonites send a thrill of horror through us as we read them. No doubt they deserved a severe chastisement; the original offence was an outrage on every right feeling, an outrage on the law of nations, a gratuitous and contemptuous insult; and in bringing these vast Syrian armies into the field they had subjected even the victorious Israelites to grievous suffering and loss, in toil, in money, and in lives.
Attempts have been made to explain away the severities inflicted on the Ammonites, but it is impossible to explain away a plain historical narrative. It was the manner of victorious warriors in those countries to steel their hearts against all compassion toward captive foes, and David, kind-hearted though he was, did the same. And if it be said that surely his religion, if it were religion of the right kind, ought to have made him more compassionate, we reply that at this period his religion was in a state of collapse. When his religion was in a healthy and active state, it showed itself in the first place by his regard for the honour of God, for whose ark he provided a resting-place, and in whose honour he proposed to build a temple. Love to God was accompanied by love to man, exhibited in his efforts to show kindness to the house of Saul for the sake of Jonathan, and to Hanun for the sake of Nahash. But now the picture is reversed; he falls into a cold state of heart toward God, and in connection with that declension we mark a more than usually severe punishment inflicted on his enemies. Just as the leaves first become yellow and finally drop from the tree in autumn, when the juices that fed them begin to fail, so the kindly actions that had marked the better periods of his life first fail, then turn to deeds of cruelty when that Holy Spirit, who is the fountain of all goodness, being resisted and grieved by him, withholds His living power.
In the whole transaction at Rabbah David shows poorly. It is not like him to be roused to an enterprise by an appeal to his love of fame; he might have left Joab to complete the conquest and enjoy the honour which his sword had substantially won. It is not like him to go through the ceremony of being crowned with the crown of the king of Ammon, as if it were a great thing to have so precious a diadem on his head. Above all, it is not like him to show so terrible a spirit in disposing of his prisoners of war. But all this is quite likely to have happened if he had not yet come to repentance for his sin. When a man's conscience is ill at ease, his temper is commonly irritable. Unhappy in his inmost soul, he is in the temper that most easily becomes savage when provoked. No one can imagine that David's conscience was at rest. He must have had that restless feeling which every good man experiences after doing a wrong act, before coming to a clear apprehension of it; he must have been eager to escape from himself, and Joab's request to him to come to Rabbah and end the war must have been very opportune. In the excitement of war he would escape for a time the pursuit of his conscience; but he would be restless and irritable, and disposed to drive out of his way, in the most unceremonious manner, whoever or whatever should cross his path.
We now return with him to Jerusalem. He had added another to his long list of illustrious victories, and he had carried to the capital another vast store of spoil. The public attention would be thoroughly occupied with these brilliant events; and a king entering his capital at the head of his victorious troops, and followed by wagons laden with public treasure, need not fear a harsh construction on his private actions. The fate of Uriah might excite little notice; the affair of Bathsheba would soon blow over. The brilliant victory that had terminated the war seemed at the same time to have extricated the king from a personal scandal David might flatter himself that all would now be peace and quiet, and that the waters of oblivion would gather over that ugly business of Uriah.
"But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord."
"And the Lord sent Nathan unto David."
Slowly, sadly, silently the prophet bends his steps to the palace. Anxiously and painfully he prepares himself for the most distressing task a prophet of the Lord ever had to go through. He has to convey God's reproof to the king; he has to reprove one from whom, doubtless, he has received many an impulse towards all that is high and holy. Very happily he clothes his message in the Eastern garb of parable. He puts his parable in such life-like form that the king has no suspicion of its real character. The rich robber that spared his own flocks and herds to feed the traveler, and stole the poor man's ewe lamb, is a real flesh-and- blood criminal to him. And the deed is so dastardly, its heartlessness is so atrocious, that it is not enough to enforce against such a wretch the ordinary law of fourfold restitution; in the exercise of his high prerogative the king pronounces a sentence of death upon the ruffian, and confirms it with the solemnity of an oath - "The man that hath done this thing shall surely die." The flash of indignation is yet in his eye, the flush of resentment is still on his brow, when the prophet with calm voice and piercing eye utters the solemn words, "Thou art the man!" Thou, great king of Israel, art the robber, the ruffian, condemned by thine own voice to the death of the worst malefactor! "Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; and I gave thee thy master's house, and thy master's wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little I would moreover have given thee such and such things. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in His sight? Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon."
It is not difficult to fancy the look of the king as the prophet delivered his message - how at first when he said, "Thou art the man," he would gaze at him eagerly and wistfully, like one at a loss to divine his meaning; and then, as the prophet proceeded to apply his parable, how, conscience-stricken, his expression would change to one of horror and agony; how the deeds of the last twelve months would glare in all their infamous baseness upon him, and outraged Justice, with a hundred glittering swords, would seem all impatient to devour him.
It is no mere imagination that, in a moment, the mind may be so quickened as to embrace the actions of a long period; and that with equal suddenness the moral aspect of them may be completely changed. There are moments when the powers of the mind as well as those of the body are so stimulated as to become capable of exertions undreamt of before. The dumb prince, in ancient history, who all his life had never spoken a word, but found the power of speech when he saw a sword raised to cut down his father, showed how danger could stimulate the organs of the body. The sudden change in David's feeling now, like the sudden change in Saul's on the way to Damascus, showed what electric rapidity may be communicated to the operations of the soul. It showed too what unseen and irresistible agencies of conviction and condemnation the great Judge can bring into play when it is His will to do so. As the steam hammer may be so adjusted as either to break a nutshell without injuring the kernel, or crush a block of quartz to powder, so the Spirit of God can range, in His effects on the conscience, between the mildest feeling of uneasiness and the bitterest agony of remorse. "When He is come," said our blessed Lord, ''He shall reprove the world of sin." How helpless men are under His operation! How utterly was David prostrated! How were the multitudes brought down on the day of Pentecost! Is there any petition we more need to press than that the Spirit be poured out to convince of sin, whether as it regards ourselves or the world? Is it not true that the great want of the Church the want of is a sense of sin, so that confession and humiliation are become rare, and our very theology is emasculated, because, where there is little sense of sin, there can be little appreciation of redemption? And is not a sense of sin that which would bring a careless world to itself, and make it deal earnestly with God's gracious offers? How striking is the effect ascribed by the prophet Zechariah to that pouring of the spirit of grace and supplication upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, when "they shall look on Him whom they have pierced, and shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for an only son, and shall be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn." Would that our whole hearts went out in those invocations of the Spirit which we often sing, but alas! so very tamely -
"Come, Holy Spirit, come,
Let Thy bright beams arise;
Dispel the darkness from our minds.
And open all our eyes.
"Convince us of our sin,
Lead us to Jesus blood,
And kindle in our breast the flame
Of never-dying love."
We cannot pass from this aspect of David's case without marking the terrible power of self-deception. Nothing blinds men so much to the real character of a sin as the fact that it is their own. Let it be presented to them in the light of another man's sin, and they are shocked. It is easy for one's self-love to weave a veil of fair embroidery, and cast it over those deeds about which one is somewhat uncomfortable. It is easy to devise for ourselves this excuse and that, and lay stress on one excuse and another that may lessen the appearance of criminality. But nothing is more to be deprecated, nothing more to be deplored, than success in that very process. Happy for you if a Nathan is sent to you in time to tear to rags your elaborate embroidery, and lay bare the essential vileness of your deed! Happy for you if your conscience is made to assert its authority, and cry to you, with its awful voice, "Thou art the man!" For if you live and die in your fool's paradise, excusing every sin, and saying peace, peace, when there is no peace, there is nothing for you but the rude awakening of the day of judgment, when the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies!
After Nathan had exposed the sin of David he proceeded to declare his sentence. It was not a sentence of death, in the ordinary sense of the term, but it was a sentence of death in a sense even more difficult to bear. It consisted of three things - first, the sword should never depart from his house; second, out of his own house evil should be raised against him, and a dishonoured harem should show the nature and extent of the humiliation that would come upon him; and thirdly, a public exposure should thus be made of his sin, so that he would stand in the pillory of Divine rebuke, and in the shame which it entailed, before all Israel, and before the sun. When David confessed his sin, Nathan told him that the Lord had graciously forgiven it, but at the same time a special chastisement was to mark how concerned God was for the fact that by his sin he had caused the enemy to blaspheme - the child born of Bathsheba was to die.
Reserving this last part of the sentence and David's bearing in connection with it for future consideration, let us give attention to the first portion of his retribution. "The sword shall never depart from thy house." Here we find a great principle in the moral government of God, - correspondence between an offence and its retribution. Of this many instances occur in the Old Testament Jacob deceived his father; he was deceived by his own sons. Lot made a worldly choice; in the world's ruin he was overwhelmed. So David having slain Uriah with the sword, the sword was never to depart from him. He had robbed Uriah of his wife; his neighbours would in like manner rob and dishonour him. He had disturbed the purity of the family relation; his own house was to become a den of pollution. He had mingled deceit and treachery with his actions; deceit and treachery would be practiced towards him. What a sad and ominous prospect! Men naturally look for peace in old age; the evening of life is expected to be calm. But for him there was to be no calm; and his trial was to fall on the tenderest part of his nature. He had a strong affection for his children; in that very feeling he was to be wounded, and that, too, all his life long. Oh let not any suppose that, because God's children are saved by His mercy from eternal punishment, it is a light thing for them to despise the commandments of the Lord! "Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee; know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that thy fear is not in Me, saith the Lord of hosts."
Pre-eminent in its bitterness was that part of David's retribution which made his own house the source from which his bitterest trials and humiliations should arise. For the most part, it is in extreme cases only that parents have to encounter this trial. It is only in the wickedest households, and in households for the most part where the passions are roused to madness by drink, that the hand of the child is raised against his father to wound and dishonour him. It was a terrible humiliation to the king of Israel to have to bear this doom, and especially to that king of Israel who in many ways bore so close a resemblance to the promised Seed, who was indeed to be the progenitor of that Seed, so that when Messiah came He should be called "the Son of David." Alas! the glory of this distinction was to be sadly tarnished. "Son of David" was to be a very equivocal title, according to the character of the individual who should bear it. In one case it would denote the very climax of honour; in another, the depth of humiliation. Yes, that household of David's would reek with foul lusts and unnatural crimes. From the bosom of that home where, under other circumstances, it would have been so natural to look for model children, pure, affectionate, and dutiful, there would come forth monsters of lust and monsters of ambition, whose deeds of infamy would hardly find a parallel in the annals of the nation I In the breasts of some of these royal children the devil would find a seat where he might plan and execute the most unnatural crimes. And that city of Jerusalem, which he had rescued from the Jebusites, consecrated as God's dwelling-place, and built and adorned with the spoils which the king had taken in many a well-fought field, would turn against him in his old age, and force him to fly wherever a refuge could be found as homeless, and nearly as destitute, as in the days of his youth when he fled from Saul!
And lastly, his retribution was to be public. He had done his part secretly, but God would do His part openly. There was not a man or woman in all Israel but would see these judgments coming on a king who had outraged his royal position and his royal prerogatives. How could he ever go in and out happily among them again? How could he be sure, when he met any of them, that they were not thinking of his crime, and condemning him in their hearts? How could he meet the hardly suppressed scowl of every Hittite, that would recall his treatment of their faithful kinsman? What a burden would he carry ever after, he that used to wear such a frank and honest and kindly look, that was so affable to all that sought his counsel, and so tenderhearted to all that were in trouble! And what outlet could he find out of all this misery? There was but one he could think of. If only God would forgive him; if He, whose mercy was in the heavens, would but receive him again of His infinite condescension into His fellowship, and vouchsafe to him that grace which was not the fruit of man's deserving, but, as its very name implied, of God's unbounded goodness, then might his soul return again to its quiet rest, though life could never be to him what it was before. And this, as we shall presently see, is what he set himself very earnestly to seek, and what of God's mercy he was permitted to find. O sinner, if thou hast strayed like a lost sheep, and plunged into the very depths of sin, know that all is not lost with thee! There is one way yet open to peace, if not to joy. Amid the ten thousand times ten thousand voices that condemn thee, there is one voice of love that comes from heaven and says, "Return unto Me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 2Sa_12:3. “Was unto him,” etc. “The custom of keeping…
CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES
2Sa_12:3. “Was unto him,” etc. “The custom of keeping pet sheep in the house, as we keep lap-dogs, is still met with among the Arabs.” (Keil.) “As a poor man he had the means of buying only one little lamb, which he was now raising, and which he loved the more as it was his only property.” (Erdmann.)
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2Sa_12:5. “Shall surely die,” or, “deserves to die.” “Because the forcible robbery of a poor man’s pet lamb was almost as bad as man-stealing.” (Keil.) “Four-fold.” This was the compensation demanded by the Mosaic law. (Exo_21:36.)
2Sa_12:7. “Thus saith the Lord.” “Just as in the parable the sin is traced to its root—namely, insatiable covetousness—so now, in the words of Jehovah which follow the prophet brings out in the most unsparing manner this hidden background of all sins.” (Keil.)
2Sa_12:8. “Thy master’s wives.” It is a general custom in the East for a king to succeed to his predecessor’s harem, and these words seem to show it was permitted to the kings of Israel. “Bishop Patrick and others give the later Jewish understanding of the law or custom; the king and no other person fell heir to the property and harem of his predecessor, but it did not follow that he actually married the inmates of the harem; they might be merely a part of the establishment. If it was a son that succeeded his father, he treated these women with reverence; if no blood relation existed between the two kings, the successor might actually take the women as his wives.” (Phillipson.) “As to the morality of the act, it was the natural result of a polygamous system, and morally in the same category with it.” (Tr. of Lange’s Commentary.)
2Sa_12:9. “Slain.” “This word to murder in the Hebrew is stronger than the one translated to kill in the former clause. “With the sword of … Ammon.” That David used the heathen to commit the deed, added to the guilt.
2Sa_12:10. “Never depart.” “That is, as long as the house or posterity of David shall last.… The bloody sword appears in the murder of the incestuous Ammon by Absalom (2Sa_13:28-29), in the death of the rebel Absalom (ch. 13–14), and in the execution of Adonijah.” (Erdmann.) “Thou has despised Me.” “This is here said instead of “Thou hast despised the word of the Lord.’ For in His word the Lord Himself reveals Himself.” (Erdmann.)
2Sa_12:11. “I will take thy wives.” The two crimes of murder and adultery were to be visited by distinct and separate punishments. (See 2Sa_14:22.)
2Sa_12:13. “Thou Shalt not die.” What is the exact meaning of these words as applied to David?… The application of the law (Lev_20:10; Deu_22:22) to an absolute Eastern monarch is out of the question, and if it were not, such an application would utterly mar the force of the passage. It is obvious, too, to observe that the criminal’s death in the parable must represent some analogous punishment in the wider field in which the real events lay, where the criminal was above human laws, and Almighty God was the Judge. In other words, the death of the soul is certainly meant, as in Eze_18:4; Eze_18:13, etc. (Biblical Commentary.)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—2Sa_12:1-13
DAVID’S REPENTANCE
I. The first step in David’s return to God is taken by God Himself. “The Lord sent Nathan.” The man who has fallen into a pit and broken his limbs must have help from without. It is useless to expect him to climb out unaided—someone must come and lift him out if he is ever again to find himself on the spot whence he fell. The first step to recovery must come from outside and from above himself. David had fallen by his own want of vigilance into a horrible pit of sin; his moral backbone was broken (Psa_51:8), and he could no longer stand upright before his conscience and God, and the longer this state continued the deeper did he sink into the mire of moral insensibility. Some help must come from without if he is ever to recover, in any degree, his lost position—some means must be taken to awaken within him, first a sense of guilt and then a hope of pardon. God sends the means and thus takes the first step towards reconciliation between Himself and David, and He does the same we believe in all similar cases. The tendency of sin is either to harden the transgressor or to fill him with despair. He either tries to palliate his guilt or he is so overwhelmed by the consciousness of it that he becomes hopeless of ever being free from either its penalty or its power. But provision has been made by God to meet both states of mind. He has sent a greater than Nathan, and in Christ (2Co_5:19) has taken the first step in reconciling the world unto Himself.
II. The means used are wonderfully adapted to attain the end desired. There is no parable of the Old Testament that can be compared with that of the “ewe lamb.” Its skill in concealing its application reminds one of our Lord’s parable of the vineyard and the wicked husbandmen, (Mar_12:1-12) and in practical application to the heart and conscience it has never been surpassed. A consideration of the analogy and contrast which it sets forth as existing between Uriah and David shows how fitted it was to set before the latter the aggravated guilt of his deed.
1. The analogy. The men in the parable were, in some respects, on an equality; they were fellow-men and fellow-citizens. “There were two men in one city.” So David and Uriah, although one was a king and the other a subject, were on a level on the common ground of humanity, and were both subject to the laws, political, social, and religious which had been given by God to the nation which regarded Jerusalem as the seat of government. David was by birth a member of the highly favoured nation to whom God had given laws direct from heaven, and Uriah by choice was a citizen of the city of the great king, and stood in this sense on a level with his royal master, as did the poor man of the parable with his oppressive fellow-citizen.
2. The contrast. “The one rich and the other poor.” Wealth means power to gratify one’s desires, to execute one’s purposes to a great extent. Poverty often means the necessity of submission to the will of those socially above us even though they be beneath us in every other respect. It was so with the oppressor and the oppressed in the parable, and it was so with Uriah and David. The king’s position made it possible for him to indulge his lawless desires without hindrance. The position of Uriah put his domestic happiness and his life at his master’s disposal, and this inequality aggravated David’s crime. The parable seems to hint at a further contrast. “The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing save one little ewe lamb.” David had many wives; we infer from the narrative that Uriah had but one. His love was therefore deeper, because purer, than that of David. The owner of many wives could not gauge the deep affection of the husband of one wife, even as the rich man of the parable could not understand the feeling with which his poor neighbour regarded his only lamb. Both the points of resemblance and of contrast were calculated to set the many aggravations of David’s sin before him when once his conscience began to awake from its long slumber. Until this moment David had evidently never looked his crime in the face; now it was so placed before him that he saw it in all its enormity, stripped of any palliation or excuse which he might have thrown over it, if he had known it for his own. It is also probable that Nathan, who was evidently much esteemed by David, had in past days informed the king of deeds of injustice committed by his rich subjects against their poorer brethren. Add to this the fact that Nathan had been the mouthpiece of God’s goodwill to David and his house, and we shall see how adapted were both the messenger and the message—first to secure the desired attention, and then to produce the needed conviction. The whole transaction is an exhibition of the manifold wisdom and the gracious condescension which ever marks the dealings of God with his erring creatures, and puts into the mouth of every restored wanderer the song, “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.” (Psa_103:8).
III. God’s pardon of the sin follows immediately upon David’s confession. This is the law of the kingdom of God, both before and since the death of the Sinbearer—“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” (1Jn_1:9.) In the narrative before us the same verse contains the acknowledgement of the guilt and its remission;—it seems as though David had hardly uttered his confession before he received an assurance that he was pardoned,—that is, that the worst effect of sin—the displeasure of God—was removed. This by no means, as we see from David’s subsequent history, frees the transgressor from all the penalty of his transgression, but it opens or reopens the way of access to a merciful God, and gives a different aspect to all the chastisement that follows. If David had, in his own words, still “kept silence” before God, (Psalms 33), he would have had no place of refuge in the calamities of his after life; but having acknowledged his iniquity, he was able to look for help to the very hand that smote him. This is the great and vital difference between the afflictions of the forgiven and the unforgiven sinner. The former must still suffer many of the consequences of sin, but the deadly sting is gone from them, and although the sentence pronounced at the fall is not reversed for him any more than for the latter, his relations to the Lawgiver are those of a forgiven child instead of a rebel subject. David’s history shows how ready God is to let a man pass from the one position to the other.
OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS
2Sa_12:1. He must be of God’s sending that shall effectually awaken conscience and speak to the heart. Nathan the prophet is here purposely sent to let good David feel the bruise of his fall.… If God’s best children have been sometimes suffered to sleep in sin, at last he awakeneth them in a fright. Now because men that are awakened hastily out of a deep and sweet sleep are apt to take it ill, and to brawl with their best friends, wise Nathan beginneth his reproof, not in plain terms, but by an allegory.… and it is most likely he did it privately, that he might the more easily work and win upon him.… Private admonition saith one, is the pastor’s privy purse, as princes have theirs, besides their public disbursements.—Trapp.
2Sa_12:2. The greater was his sin, since pressed with no necessity. What need had the angels to leave their first estate and habitation? (Jud_1:6.) What need had Adam to reach after a deity? What need had Ahab to covet Naboth’s vineyard? etc. It is no small aggravation of a man’s sin to fall into it without strong temptation.—Trapp.
2Sa_12:3-5. It is most instructive to observe that Nathan in his parable calls attention, not to the sensuality and cruelty of David’s crime, but simply to its intense and brutal selfishness … Remember this, even as regards the special sin of which David was guilty. Many, perhaps, who would excuse themselves on other grounds for the ruin which, by the indulgence of their own passions, they help to bring upon the souls and bodies of their fellow-creatures, might be startled, as was David, if once they could be convinced of its mean and selfish baseness.—Dean Stanley.
2Sa_12:5-6. This energy of virtue, this mighty effort to get credit with oneself for a lively sense of right and hatred of injustice—who does not recognise it? Who should not tremble when he thinks—the evil spirit who prompts to this consummate deceit and hypocrisy is near to me? I am tempted continually to fly from the light which would show me the foul spots in my own soul, by projecting them outside of me, and pronouncing sentence upon them in another man.—Maurice.
I. Impartial reason is ever ready to condemn any flagrant iniquity. There is as discernable a difference between good and evil as between white and black, when nothing interposes to obstruct the sight, or misrepresent the object. When a particular case happens to be entangled with something of nicety, there may be room for doubt, or need of consideration, but in general men can pass judgment readily and boldly. David wanted not the wisdom of an angel to discern what common sense would have dictated in a like case. But—II. The prejudices of interest and lust, may, and do hinder men from discerning, or at least distinguishing in practice between right and wrong, even in the plainest cases. Such was most apparently the case with David. There was no room for comparison between two injuries of a size so unequal. He who was so tenderly sensible of what the poor man was supposed to suffer, could not possibly be ignorant of how much the injured Uriah must have suffered. In the heat of his indignation against a supposed oppressor, he put on the severity of a judge more rigorous than the law directed. And this when he had been guilty of a cruelty which left not the possibility of restitution. III. Although men do sometimes suffer themselves to commit gross sins, in open contradiction to their own inward light, yet all notorious iniquity stands condemned by the universal verdict of mankind. It is no easy matter to bribe the reason and warp the judgment so far as to make men advocate their own irregularities; but let sinners once sit in judgment on each other, and they will all come in condemnation in their turns, and all with equal justice. While the affections are unengaged, and temptation at a distance, nature recoils at the very thought of a great enormity. (See 2Ki_8:13.) It is probable had David been foretold by Nathan how he would act in the matter of Uriah, he would have answered him in the words of Hazael, “Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?”—Dean Moss.
2Sa_12:5-7. I. Men as sinners are frequently ignorant of their own characters.… Although there is no subject of more vital interest to man than himself, and none which he has such facilities for studying, yet of nothing is he more ignorant.… When Christ warned Peter of his denial of Him, the apostle exclaimed “Though all men deny thee, yet will not I deny thee;” but within a few hours Peter repeatedly, and with oaths, denied his Master.… Why are we so ignorant of our own characters? I may mention three reasons:—First, The lack of a sin-resisting force. “Sin,” says Caird, in his admirable sermon on Self-Ignorance, “can be truly measured only when it is resisted.” Steam is an illustration. So long as it is allowed to pass away freely and unrestrained from the boiling vessel its power is inappreciable; but resist it, endeavour to confine it, and it will gather a force that will shiver you to atoms. Conscience is the sin-resisting force, and this in the sinner is weak, etc. Secondly, The infirmity of the sin-detecting power. Conscience is this power, and by depravity it often gets deadened so that it does not feel or see. If the thermometer is frozen, how can you tell the temperature of the air?… Thirdly, The repulsiveness of a sin-polluted heart. Man feels that all things within are not right. He suspects that there are disease, danger, and a lurking enemy there, and he keeps away. He regards his own heart as the insolvent debtor regards his ledger, etc. II. The men who are most ignorant of themselves are most severe in their judgment of others.… This principle is illustrated also in the parable of the householders (Mat_21:33-42); in the history of Caiaphas (Mar_14:63); and in the conduct of the Pharisee in the temple, in relation to the Publican. He that has the “beam” in his own eye sees the “mote” in his brother’s eye.… III. However self-ignorant a man may be, a period of self-recognition must come.… I have read in ancient history of a dumb prince who had never spoken a word in all his life, till one day he saw an enemy draw a sword against his father; and as he beheld the fatal blow descending, the terrible feeling unlocked his tongue and made him speak. So it will be with all dumb consciences soon. The period of self-recognition came to some of the murderers of Christ on the day of Pentecost; and they cried out, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” It came to Paul, and he exclaimed, “What things were gain to me, I counted loss.” When God touches the conscience, the man stands self-revealed.
Awakened conscience acts the artist;
Uses the Sun of Heaven’s law
To photograph the sinner’s life,
Then holds it up a life-like picture—
A hideous monster to the affrighted eye.
—Dr. David Thomas.
2Sa_12:13. Two things are to be remarked in connection with David’s penitential utterance.
1. That he regarded social wrongs as sins against the Lord. All that appears to us in the crimes of which he was convicted was purely social.… Still, inasmuch as social order is a Divine institution, wrongs against society are sins against God. Things are right and wrong between man and man because Heaven has willed them so … and the sinner’s grief, when conscience is aroused, is not so much that he has injured man, as that he has insulted his Maker. “Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned.”
2. That he felt that he himself was responsible for the commission of those sins. He does not refer to the tempter or the temptation,—does not say a word about necessity and the influence of circumstances upon his organisation; no, no! all this will do very well when conscience is sleeping for the intellect to speculate about. But conscience despises your fatalism, dashes its logical fabrics to pieces. “I have sinned”.… Taking Nathan’s language as expressing forgiveness of sin, the following remarks are suggested.
1. Forgiveness is a real act. It is not a mere vision, or an idea of a superstitious mind, nor a mere figure of speech;—it is a “putting away of sin”.…
2. Forgiveness is an act performed by the Lord.… None can forgive men’s sins but the Lord.…
3. Forgiveness is an act which delivers from death. “The wages of sin is death.”.… “Thou shalt not die”; even thy physical dissolution shall be only a sleep.
4. Forgiveness is an act dependent on repentance.… Repent, that your sins may be blotted out, etc.
5. Forgiveness is an act with which the true minister has much to do. Whilst we repudiate the doctrine of priestly absolution, we hold it to be the right and duty of every true minister of Christ to do what Nathan now did,—Declare Divine forgiveness to Him who has proved the genuineness of his penitence.—Dr. David Thomas.
It may seem to some, that a penitence thus suddenly produced could be neither very deep nor very thorough. But to those who think thus, three things must be said.
First: an impression may be produced in a moment which will remain indelible. We have heard, for example, of one who, as he was travelling in an Alpine region at midnight, saw for an instant, by the brilliancy of a flash of lightning, that he was in such a position that another step would have been over a fearful precipice, and the effect upon him was that he started back and waited for the morning dawn. Now such a flash of lightning into the darkness of David’s soul, this “Thou art the man,” of Nathan’s, was to him. It revealed to him, by its momentary brilliance, the full aggravation of his iniquity. He did not need or desire a second sight of it. That was enough to stir him up to hatred of his sin, and of himself.
But, second: we must, in connection with this narrative, read the Psalms to which David’s penitence gave birth, namely, the 51st and the 32nd; and if these are not the genuine utterances of a passionate sincerity, where shall we find that quality in any literature? Admirably has Chandler said of the 51st Psalm: “The heart appears in every line; and the bitter anguish of a wounded conscience discovers itself by the most natural and convincing symbols. Let but the Psalm be read without prejudice, and with a view only to collect the real sentiments expressed in it, and the disposition of heart that appears throughout the whole of it, and no man of candour, I am confident, will ever suspect that it was the dictate of hypocrisy, or could be penned from any other motive but a strong conviction of the heinousness of his offence, and the earnest desire of God’s forgiveness, and being restrained from the commission of the like transgressions for the future. Furthermore, as another evidence of the genuineness of David’s repentance, we point to the words of Nathan, “The Lord also hath put away thy sin,” and ask if the prophet, as Jehovah’s representative, would have said anything like that if the penitence of David had not been sincere.… What, really, is the distinction between the people of God and the wicked on the earth? Is it that the one class commit no sins, while the other fall into iniquity? No; the godly man does sin. No one will be more ready to acknowledge that than himself. The difference, therefore, is not there. It lies in this: that when the child of God falls into sin, he rises out of it and leaves it, and cries to God for pardon, purity, and help; but when the ungodly man falls into sin, he continues in it, and delights in it, as does the sow in her wallowing in the mire. It is a poor, shallow philosophy, therefore, that sneers at such a history as this of David; nay, it is worse even than that: it is the very spirit of Satan, rejoicing, as it does, in the iniquity of others. On this point, however, I gladly avail myself of the language of a living writer, not usually considered to have any very strong bias in favour of the Scriptural views of men and things—I mean Thomas Carlyle. “Faults!” says this author, in his “Lecture on the Hero as Prophet;” “the greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible, above all, one would think might know better. Who is called there the man according to God’s own heart? David, the Hebrew king, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon unbelievers sneer and ask, ‘Is this your man according to God’s heart?’ The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults? what are the outward details of a life, if the inner secret of it—the remorse, temptations, true, often baffled, never-ending struggle of it—be forgotten? ‘It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.’ Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most Divine? The deadliest sin, I say were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin. That is death. The heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact—is dead. It is pure, as dead dry sand is pure. David’s life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man’s moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward what is good and best. Struggle often baffled sore, baffled down into entire wreck, yet a struggle never ended; ever with tears, repentance, true, unconquerable purpose begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man’s walking in truth always that—‘a succession of falls?’ Man can do no other. In this wild element of a life, he has to struggle upward: now fallen, now abased; and ever with tears, repentance, and bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again, still onward. That his struggle be a faithful, unconquerable one, that is the question of questions.”—Taylor.
The greatest griefs are not most verbal. Saul confessed his sin more largely, less effectually. God cares not for phrases, but for affections. The first piece of our amends to God for sinning is the acknowledgment of sin: he can do little, that in a just offence cannot accuse himself. If we cannot be so good as we would, it is reason we should do God so much right, as to say how evil we are. And why was not this done sooner? It is strange to see how easily sin gets into the heart; how hardly it gets out of the mouth: is it because sin, like unto Satan, where it hath got possession, is desirous to hold it, and knows that it is fully ejected by a free confession? or because, in a guiltiness of deformity, it hides itself in the breast where it is once entertained, and hates the light? or because the tongue is so feed with self-love, that it is loath to be drawn unto any verdict against the heart or hands? or is it out of an idle misprision of shame, which, while it should be placed in offending, is misplaced in disclosing of our offence?—Bp. Hall.
2Sa_12:5-13. The sin of David, and his unconsciousness of his own sin—and so also his repentance through the disclosure to him of his own sin—are exactly what are most likely to take place in characters like his, like ours, made up of mixed forms of good and evil. The hardened, depraved, worldly man is not ignorant of his sin; he knows it, defends it, he is accustomed to it. But the good man, or the man who is half good and half bad—he overlooks his sin. His good deeds conceal his bad deeds, often even from others, more often still from himself.… For others, this history teaches us to regard with tenderness the faults, the sins, the crimes, of those who, gifted with great and noble qualities, are, by that strange union of strength and weakness which we so often see, betrayed into acts which more ordinary, commonplace characters avoid or escape. We need not, nor dare, deny their sin … but we must thankfully acknowledge the background, the atmosphere, so to speak, of excellence which renders a return from such sins possible.… And for ourselves, let us remember that such a foundation of good as there was in David’s character is never thrown away. If it is not able to resist the trial altogether, it will at least be best able to recover from it. David’s fall sufficiently teaches us, not to rely on our religious principle, however sound, nor to trust in our religious zeal, however fervent; but his repentance bids us humbly hope that whatever good purposes and sincere prayers and faith in God, and love of Christ, we have been able to retain amid the changes and chances of the world, will stand in the evil day, and do us good service still: there will be something to which we can appeal with the certainty of some response when the first flush of passion, the first cloud of self-deceit has passed away.—Dean Stanley.
Another view of the effect of David’s humiliation may be noticed, not as if it were a matter of certainty, but rather as a suggestion for study and consideration. There is reason to think that this new exercise of David’s soul—his deep sense of sin, and bitter experience of its fruits—fitted him for a most important function, which he would now begin to fulfil more especially than heretofore. These exercises of his soul enabled him to become more suitably the type of the sin-bearing Jesus, and to give utterance to those feelings of deep oppression and agonizing grief that, in their fullest and deepest meaning, none could appropriate but the Man of Sorrows. Up to this time David had had comparatively little acquaintance with the burden of sin; … but no one could in any measure foreshadow the Messiah without a deep personal acquaintance with the burden of guilt.… In one aspect it may be a startling thing to suggest that a time of writhing under the horrors of guilt fitted David better to become the type of the sinless One. But in another aspect the statement is no paradox.… It is not meant that either in kind or degree David’s feelings were identical with the suffering Messiah, but only that the resemblance was such that the language which was suggested by the one was suitable, and shown to be suitable, to express the other.—Blaikie.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 2Sa 12:1-7
2Sa 12:1-7
The chief devotional exercise which turns religion into a personal thing, which brings it home to men’s business and bosoms, is self-examination. A man’s religion cannot well be one of merely good impressions, the staple of it cannot well be an evaporating sentiment, if he have acquired the habit of honestly and candidly looking within.
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I. Self-examination may be called an arraignment of ourselves at our own bar. It is an exercise most essential to our spiritual health, and the more earnestly to be pressed upon Protestants, because there exists in the Reformed Churches no security but that of right principle for its ever being practised. The system of the confessional, with all its evils and abominations, may at least fairly lay claim to the advantage of exacting a certain amount of introspection with those who honestly conform to it.
II. The necessity for self-examination arises from the fact, so distinctly stated in Scripture, that "the heart is deceitful above all things," and that "he that trusteth in his own heart is a fool." While all characters are liable to this snare of self-deception, those are more particularly exposed to it who, like St. Peter and David, are persons of keen sensibilities, warm temperaments, quick affections. An acrid, soured character cannot flatter itself that it is right with half the facility of a warm and genial character. Self-love conspires with trust in our own hearts to make dupes of us as regards our spiritual account.
III. The first step in self-examination is to be fully aware of the deceitfulness of the heart, and to pray against it, watch against it, and use every possible method of counteracting it. The probe of self-examination must be applied to the better as well as to the worse parts of our conduct. And we must not forget that dissatisfaction with ourselves will avail us nothing, except as it leads us to a perfect, joyful, and loving satisfaction with our Saviour.
E. M. Goulburn, Thoughts on Personal Religion, p. 68.
References: 2Sa 12:1-7.—S. Goebel, The Parables of Jesus, p. 10. 2Sa 12:1-14.—Parker, vol. vii., p. 160.
2Sa 12:4
The mixture of gold and clay of which our nature is composed is nowhere so strikingly displayed as in the constant tendency of men to conceive lofty purposes, and then to attain them by mean and sordid methods. The high impulse and the low self-indulgent method are both real, and this confused and contradictory humanity of ours is able to attain them both. We are always building steps of straw to climb to heights of gold.
There is real charity in the impulse of the rich man in Samuel, there is essential meanness in his act. He really wanted to help the poor traveller who came to him, but he wanted to help him with another man’s property, to feed him on a neighbour’s sheep. A great deal of our official charity comes very near the pattern of this ancient benefactor.
I. One of the truths about the advancing culture of a human nature is, that it is always deepening the idea of possession and making it more intimate. There are deepening degrees of ownership, and as each one of them becomes real to a man, the previous ownerships get a kind of unreality. With this deepening of the idea of property, the idea of charity must deepen also. No relief of need is satisfactory which stops short of at least the effort to inspire character, to make the poor man a sharer in what is at least the substance of the rich man’s wealth. And at the bottom of this profounder conception of charity there must lie a deeper and more spiritual conception of property. The rich man’s wealth, what is it? Not his money. It is something which came to him in the slow accumulation of his money. It is a character into which enter those qualities that make true and robust manliness in all the ages and throughout the world; independence, intelligence, and the love cf struggle.
II. This makes chanty a far more exacting thing than it could be without such an idea. It clothes it in self-sacrifice. It requires the entrance into it of a high motive.
III. The deeper conception of benefaction which will not rest satisfied with anything short of the imparting of character still does not do away with the inferior and more superficial ideas. It uses the lower forms of gift as means or types or pledges. The giving of money is ennobled by being made the type of a Diviner gift which lies beyond.
Phillips Brooks, The Candle of the Lord, p. 336.
Reference: Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vi., p. 18.
2Sa 12:7
I. It is just in this circumstance, that David’s righteous and evil acts are not to be harmonised, that the wholesomeness of his written story lies. We do not feel the inconsistency which unbelievers point to in David, with the sneering question, "Is this the man after God’s own heart?" We feel rather that were it not for these inconsistencies David would be unlike us, and his story no pattern of ours.
II. David’s method of attaining his treacherous object here seems to us clumsy when compared with some modern refinements of treachery; but the moving cause—gratification of self and disregard of all that stood in the way of it—this is the sin: the rest is merely an accident of time and locality.
III. How are we to account for David’s strange conversion? People who pride themselves on being worldly-wise will tell you that a man’s conscience does not trouble him until he is found out. They will tell you that repentance is easy when there is no escape. But this will never account for the real repentance of any man who has been brought from darkness into light. When a man’s arguments for sin are swept away, and he sees it as it is, he may well be filled with horror and disgust. The horror is no subject for a careless sneer, but for awe and reverence.
A. Ainger, Sermons Preached in the Temple Church, p. 26.
I. Notice first the general character of David. It is full of variety, full of impulse, full of genius; it covers a great range of characters amongst ourselves; it is not like one class or character only, but like many. He is exactly that mixture of good and evil which is in ourselves, not all good or all evil, but a mixture of both, of a higher good and of a deeper evil, yet still both together.
II. Let us now see how from this union of glory and shame, of holiness and sin, we can draw the fitting lessons of David’s repentance and our own. (1) Observe that the Scripture narrative does not exaggerate and does not extenuate. The wise and impartial history sets before us without fear or favour, in all its brightness and in all its darkness, the life of David. His goodness is not denied because of his sin, nor is his sin because of his goodness. (2) The sin of David and his unconsciousness of his own sin, and so also his repentance through the disclosure to him of his own sin, are exactly what are most likely to take place in characters like his, like ours, made up of mixed forms of good and of evil. His good deeds conceal his bad deeds, often even from others, more often still from himself. (3) Notice that Nathan in his parable called attention, not to the sensuality and cruelty of David’s crime but simply to its intense and brutal selfishness. Notice also that even deeper than David’s sense, when once aroused, of his injustice to man, was his sense of his guilt and shame before God. (4) The story teaches: (a) that no case is too late or too bad to return if only the heart can be truly roused to a sense of its own guilt and God’s holiness; (b) that David’s former goodness had this advantage: that, great as was his fall, there was for him a hope of restoration which in another there would not have been. A foundation of good in a character is never thrown away. If it is not able to resist the trial altogether, it will at least be best able to recover from it.
A. P. Stanley, Oxford Lent Sermons, 1858, No. 2.
I. When Alexander, king of Macedon, had his portrait taken, he sat with his face resting on his fingers, as though he were in a profound reverie, but really that he might hide from the observer’s view an unsightly scar. Our Bible always keeps the sitter’s fingers off the scars. It paints the full face with flawless detail—beauty and blotches, saintliness and scars.
II. After all, is it not a true human instinct and a healthy canon of art that puts the finger on the scars of the face? Is it fair and just to David himself to reduce the account of his numerous victories over adjacent foes to a few verses, and be so prodigal in sketching the one glaring wickedness of a career of splendid purpose, fine daring, and magnificent achievement? All that depends upon the spirit in which the biographer conceives and carries out his design, and mainly upon the purpose which dominates every part of his painting. (1) This story has set in the irrefutable logic of facts the truth that increasing and incredible mischiefs follow the violation of the laws of social purity in monarch as well as subject, in the children of genius and of goodness as well as in the offspring of sensualism and vice. (2) It has proclaimed that woman is not a satanic bait for man’s soul, but a minister to his purity and happiness. (3) It has revealed the essential falseness of the polygamous basis of family life. (4) It is a pathetic and powerful enforcement of the law, discovered in the dawn of the world’s life, that it is impossible to hush up a solitary lapse. (5) But the principal message of this chapter in the life of Israel’s greatest hero is that David’s great sin is met and mastered by God’s greater grace.
III. It is not well for any of us to escape difficulty, combat, or criticism. We must not forget the perils of advancing years. Age has its dangers not less than youth. The true soldier aims to be faithful unto death. If David falls after half a century’s experience of God’s mercy, who is safe?
IV. God enlarges a thorough repentance with His free and instant forgiveness, and crowns it with swift peace, soul-enlargement, and hallowed progress. "The Lord hath also put away thy sin."
V. But forgiveness is not all David seeks, nor is it all he obtains. The greater grace of God triumphs over the great sin of David in making it contributive to his spiritual enlargement, the clearing and expansion of his conceptions of sin, of responsibility, of the personality of God, and of holiness.
J. Clifford, Daily Strength for Daily Living, p. 203.
References: 2Sa 12:7.—T. Coster, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 332; Bishop Armstrong, Parochial Sermons, p. 144; J. G. Packer, Twelve Sermons, p. 112; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 15; J. Edmunds, Sixty Sermons, p. 293; C. Girdlestone, A Course of Sermons for the Year, p. 165; H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons, 1st series, p. 85. 2Sa 12:7-13.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. viii., p. 348.
2Sa 12:13
The David of the Old Testament and the Peter of the New were alike keen, impetuous, high-wrought. Each falls in his strong point, because the strength of the good is necessarily the strength of the evil. But in both sin is the parenthesis; the thread of grace is gathered up again.
I. This was not David’s only transgression. But it was the greatest, and perhaps if this had been resisted, the others would not have been committed, for sin strangely makes sin, as the mists of to-day fall in the rain of to-morrow. His great successes had brought him to that state of mind which is most open to the assaults of evil.
II. The strength of David’s confession lay in the three words "against the Lord." Any one can say, "I have sinned," but you must have known God, you must have realised what sin is to God, and you must have felt something of what God is to you before you can say, "I have sinned against the Lord."
J. Vaughan, Sermons, 7th series, p. 112.
2Sa 12:13
I. The first thought which strikes us in connection with this text is the rapidity with which the penitent received his answer, a rapidity so great that the pardon had actually preceded the confession, for the instant David’s acknowledgment had passed his lips God’s messenger said, "The Lord hath put away thy sin."
II. In these grand, simple words "put away," what immeasurable distances lie! Even the eye of Omnipotence cannot reach them. "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us."
J. Vaughan, Sermons, 7th series, p. 120.
I. Too little attention is commonly bestowed on the severity with which David was punished for his sins. He was punished as long as he lived, and as long as he lived he repented of those sins and humbled himself under the consciousness of them. When Nathan was sent to David, he spoke five distinct prophecies, not only "Thou shalt not die," but four others also, and these of a very different tenor; and all of them were alike fulfilled. To point out the fulfilment of these prophecies is simply to give a summary of the after-life of David. (1) First we read how the child Bathsheba had borne to David was smitten of the Lord and died. (2) The sword did not depart from his house through the whole remainder of his life. (3) This enemy was raised up to David from among the members of his own house and family. (4) As he had invaded the sanctuary of another man’s home, his own hearth was no longer sacred. All this teaches us that "wherewithal a man sinneth, by the same also shall he be punished." But, above all, it is a lesson that God is never more merciful than when He makes punishment follow upon sin.
II. Although David was severely punished, he was yet freely forgiven. The forgiveness of an offender may be granted in two ways: it may be without any conditions, or it may be granted quite as truly, quite as freely, and yet not so unconditionally. In the present case God had annexed a chastisement to His pardon and declared that it should fall upon David, and from that day forward every worldly visitation which recalled the memory of his sin brought with it a twofold blessing: it kept his conscience tender, that his fall might be his warning; and it renewed the pledge of the full and final forgiveness that had been promised to him.
R. Scott, University Sermons, p. 251.
References: 2Sa 12:13.—R. Heber, Parish Sermons, vol. ii., p. 54; R. C. Trench, Brief Thoughts and Meditations, p. 120; J. Van Oosterzee, Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 57; Sermons for the Christian Seasons, 2nd series, vol. iii., p. 705.
2Sa 12:13-14
I. When we read the history of David’s fall, what surprises and perhaps somewhat perplexes us at the first is the apparent suddenness of it. There seems no preparation, no warning. But if we look back to the first verse of the chapter preceding, we shall find the explanation there: "At the time when kings go forth to battle... David tarried still at Jerusalem." Had he been enduring hardship with the armies of Israel, these temptations to luxury and uncleanness would probably never have come near him; certainly he would not have succumbed beneath them. The first lesson from the story is that prosperous times are perilous times.
II. Notice the way in which sins are linked to one another, in which, as by a terrible necessity, one leads on to a second, and a second to a third, and so on. The great enemy of souls is in nothing more skilful than in breaking down the bridges of retreat behind the sinner. Wrong may become worse wrong, but it never becomes right. Close walking with God is the only safe walking.
III. Do not miss this lesson—the ignoble servitude to men in which the sinner is very often through his sin entangled. Mark how David becomes the servant of Joab from the moment that he has made Joab the partaker of his evil counsels, the accomplice of his crime. Let no man in this sense be thy master. Let no man know that of thee which, if he chose to reveal it, would cast thee down from the fair esteem and reputation which thou enjoyest before men.
IV. Note the darkness of heart which sin brings over its servants. For well-nigh a whole year David has lain in his sin, and yet all the while his conscience is in a deathlike sleep, so that it needs a thunder-voice from heaven, the rebuke of a prophet, to rouse him from this lethargy.
V. In David’s answer to Nathan we observe: (1) The blessing that goes along with a full, free, unreserved confession of sin, being, as this is, the sure token of a true repentance. (2) While he who has fully confessed is fully forgiven, there is still, as concerns this present life, a sad "howbeit" behind. God had taken from him the eternal penalty of his sin; but He had never said, Thy sin shall not be bitter to thee. God may forgive His children their sin, and yet He may make their sin most bitter to them here, teaching them in this way its evil, which they might else have been in danger of forgetting, the aggravation which there is in the sins of a child, in sins against light, against knowledge, against love.
R. C. Trench, Sermons Preached in Westminster Abbey, p. 351.
I. Forgiveness does not mean impunity. God forgave David, yet bereaved him. Whatsoever men sow, that they reap, however bitterly they may repent having mingled tares with the wheat.
II. The meaning and mercy of punishment. (1) Punishment deepens both our sense of sin and our hatred of it. (2) Punishment deepens self-distrust and reliance upon God. (3) Punishment puts our repentance to the proof.
S. Cox, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 29.
References: 2Sa 12:13, 2Sa 12:14.—S. Cox, Expositions. 1st series, p. 143; Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, vol. v., p. 139; F. W. Krummacher, David the King of Israel, p. 373. 2Sa 12:14.—Parker, vol. vii., p. 236. 2Sa 12:15-23.—W. M. Taylor, David King of Israel, p. 210. 2Sa 12:20-23.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., p. 355. 2Sa 12:22.—Parker, vol. vii., p. 236.
2Sa 12:23.
The doctrine of our future meeting and recognition is intimated in the earlier records of Scripture. We are told of Abraham, Jacob, Aaron, and Moses that each was gathered to his people. This cannot be merely a peculiar idiom of language signifying that they died. In some instances it is expressly said they died, and then it is added, "were gathered to their fathers." There would seem to be in the very heart of the expression a recognition that their fathers were still in existence in some state or other. As we advance to the New Testament we find that the twilight is broadening into the perfect day. This doctrine forms much of the very warp of the teaching of our Saviour and His Apostles.
I. It is taught, for example, that in eternity and in heaven we shall retain our personal identity. What life has not been able to do in the way of destroying our identity, death will not do. The sense of I, me, myself, will be with us as before.
II. We must also remember that the departed just are not diffused through the universe, but are gathered into one place. They are with the Lord, and they are there in a family relation. It is only needful to appreciate fully this fact in order to see that mutual recognition is indispensable and inevitable.
III. We do not dream that the "spirits of the just made perfect," dwelling in our Father’s house, will sit in silent reserve side by side, and as little do we dream that their speech will never be concerned with the way by which the Lord has led them. Unless the whole family in heaven is to be marked by features the very opposite of every earthly family, unless it is to be distinguished by isolation, reserve, and coldness, mutual recognition must be not only a possible thing, but an inevitable one, and we shall know as we are known.
E. Mellor, In the Footsteps of Heroes, p. 125.
References: 2Sa 12:23.—J. Vaughan, Sermons, 9th series, p. 205. 2Sa 12:24.—Congregationalist, vol. vii., p. 734. 2Sam 13—E. White, The Mystery of Growth, p. 357.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v5 2 Samuel
2 Samuel
THOU ART THE MAN
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2Sa 12:5 - 2Sa 12:7.
Nathan’s apologue, so tenderly beautiful, takes the poet-king on the most susceptible side of his character. All his history shows him as a man of wonderfully sweet, chivalrous, generous, swiftly compassionate nature. And so, when he hears the story of a mean, heartless selfishness, all that is best in him kindles into a generous indignation, and flames out into instinctive condemnation. ‘The man that did this thing shall die because he had no pity.’
And then, on to that hot fervour of righteous wrath, comes this dash of cold water, ‘And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.’ Like some keen spear-point, sharpened almost to invisibility, this short sentence {two words in the original} driven by a strong hand, goes right through the armour to the very heart. What a collapse there would be in the king when the pointed forefinger of the prophet emphasised and drove home the application!
I. This dramatic scene before us may be taken as suggesting first that we are all strangely blind to our own faults.
If a man’s own sin is held up before him a little disguised, he says, ‘How ugly it is!’ And if only for a moment he can be persuaded that it is not his own conduct but some other sinner’s that he is judging, the instinctive condemnation comes. We have two sets of names for vices: one set which rather mitigates and excuses them, and another set which puts them in their real hideousness. We keep the palliative set for home consumption, and liberally distribute the plain-spoken, ugly set amongst the vices and faults of our friends. The same thing which I call in myself prudence I call in you meanness. The same thing which you call in yourselves generous living, you call in your friend filthy sensualism. That which, to the doer of it, is only righteous indignation, to the onlooker is passionate anger. That which, in the practiser of it, is no more than a due regard for the interests of his own family and himself in the future, is, to the envious lookers-on, shabbiness and meanness in money matters. That which, to the liar, is only prudent diplomatic reticence, to the listener is falsehood. That which, in the man that judges his own conduct, is but ‘a choleric word,’ is, in his friend, when he judges him, ‘flat blasphemy.’
And so we go all round the circle, and condemn our own vices, when we see them in other people. So the king who had never thought, when he stole away Uriah’s one ewe lamb, and did him to death by traitorous commands, setting him in the front of the battle, that he was wanting in compassion, blazes up at once, and righteously sentences the other ‘man’ to death, ‘because he had no pity.’ He had never thought of himself or of his crime as cruel, as mean, as selfish, as heartless. But when he sees a partially disguised picture of it he knows it for the devil’s child that it is.
‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,’
and so it would, to see ourselves as we see others. We judge our brother and ourselves by two different standards.
And that is only one phase of a more general principle, one case that comes under a yet wider law, viz. that we are all blind, strangely blind, to our own faults. Why that is so I do not need to spend time in inquiring, except for a distinctly practical purpose. Let me just remind you how a strong wish for a thing that seems desirable always tends to confuse to a man the plain distinction between right and wrong; and how passions once excited, or the animal lusts and desires once kindled in a man, go straight to their object without the smallest regard to whether that object is to be reached by the breach of all laws, human and divine, or not. Excite any passion, and the passion is but a blind propensity towards certain good, and takes no question or consideration of whether right or wrong is involved at all.
And further, habit familiarises with evil and diminishes our sense of it as evil. A man that has been for half a day in some ill-ventilated room does not notice the poisonous atmosphere; if you go into it you are half suffocated at first, and breathe more easily as you get used to it. A man can live amidst the foulest poison of evil; and, as the Styrian peasants get fat upon arsenic, his whole nature may seem to thrive by the poison that it absorbs. They tell us that the breed of fish that live in the lightless caverns in the bowels of some mountains, by long disuse have had their eyes atrophied out of them, and are blind because they have lived out of the light. And so men that live in the love of evil lose the capacity of discerning the evil, and ‘he that walketh in darkness’ becomes blind, blind to his sin, and blind to all the realities of life.
Then is it not true, too, that many of us systematically and of set purpose, continually avoid all questions as to the moral nature of our conduct? How many a man and woman who reads these words never sits down to think whether what they have been doing is right or wrong, because they have deep down in their consciences an uneasy suspicion as to what the answer would be. So, by reason of fostering passion, by reason of listening to wishes, by reason of the habit of wrongdoing, by reason of the systematic avoidance of all careful investigation of our character and of our conduct, we lose the power of fairly deciding upon the nature of our own acts.
Then self-love comes in, and still another thing tends to blind us. We are all ready to acquiesce in the general indictment, and so to shirk the particular application of it. That is what people do about all great moral principles that ought to affect conduct,-they admit them in words, as general truths applying to mankind, and then hide themselves in the crowd, and think that they escape the incidence and particular application of the truths. No one of us would, I suppose, venture in plain words to stand up and say: ‘I am an exception to your general confessions of sin,’ and most of us would be ready to unite in the acknowledgment: ‘We have all come short of the glory of God,’ though in our consciences there has never stirred the faintest movement of self-condemnation even whilst our lips have been uttering the confession. Do not shrink away in the crowd, my brother! Come out to the front, and stand by yourself as God sees you, isolated. Look at your own actions; never mind about other men’s. Do not content yourselves with saying,’ We have sinned’; say, ‘I have sinned against Thee.’ God and you are as if alone in the universe. ‘Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned.’ There are no crowds in God’s eyes; He deals with single souls. Every one of us,-thou, and thou, and thou,-must give account of himself to God.
II. In the next place, let me ask you to think how this story suggests that the true work of God’s message is to tear down the veil and to show the ugly thing.
‘Nathan said unto David, Thou art the man.’ It needed a prophet to do that, with divine authority. Nothing less would suffice to get through the thick bosses of the buckler of self-conceit and ignorance which he had to penetrate. As God’s messenger, he gathered up, as I said, into one sharp-pointed, keen-edged, steel-bright sentence, the very spirit of the whole ancient Law, which seeks to individualise the sinner, and to drive home to the conscience the consciousness of wrong-doing.
The remarks that I have been making, in the former part of this sermon, imperfect as they must necessarily be, may at least serve one or two purposes in reference to this part of my discourse.
It seems to me that if what I have been saying as to a man’s blindness to his own true moral character be at all correct, there flows from that thought a strong presumption in favour of a divine revelation. We need another than our own voice to lay down the law of conduct, and to accuse and condemn the breaches of it. Conscience is not a wholly reliable guide, and is neither an impartial nor an all-knowing judge. Unconsciousness of evil is not innocence. It is not the purest of women who ‘wipes her mouth and says, I have done no harm.’ My conscience says to me, ‘It is wrong to do wrong’; but when I say to my conscience, ‘Yes, and pray what is wrong?’ a large variety of answers is possible. A man may sophisticate his conscience, or bribe his conscience, or throttle his conscience, or sear his conscience. And so the man who is worst, who, therefore, ought to be most chastised by his conscience, has most immunity from it, and where, if it is to be of use, it ought to be most powerful, there it is weakest.
What then? Why this, then-a standard that varies is not a standard; we are left with a leaden rule. My conscience, your conscience, is like the standard measures which we at present possess, which by their very names-foot, handbreadth, nail, and the like, tell us that they were originally but the length of one man’s limb. And so your measure of right and wrong, and another man’s measure, though they may substantially correspond, yet differ according to your differences of education, character, and a thousand other things. So that the individual man’s standard needs to be rectified. You have to send all the weights and measures up to the Tower now and then, to get them stamped and certified. And, as I believe, this fluctuation of our moral judgments shows the need for a fixed pattern and firm unchangeable standard, external to our mutable selves. A light on deck which pitches with the pitching ship is no guide. It must flash from a white pillar founded on a rock and immovable amid the restless waves. Our need of such a standard raises a strong presumption that a good God will give us what we need, if He can. Such a standard He has given, as I believe, in the revelation of Himself which lies in this book, and culminates in the life and character of Jesus Christ our Lord. There, and by that, we can set our watches. There we can read the law of morality, and by our deflections from it we can measure the amount of our guilt.
But beyond that, the remarks which I have already made in the former part of my sermon may suggest to us, along with this utterance of the prophet’s, that one indispensable characteristic and certain criterion of a true message and gospel from God is that it pierces the conscience and kindles the sense of sin. My dear brethren, there is a great deal of so-called Christian teaching, both from pulpits and books in this day, which, to my mind, is altogether defective by reason of its underestimate of the cardinal fact of sin, and its consequent failure to represent the fundamental characteristic of the gospel as being deliverance and redemption. I am quite sure that the root of nine-tenths of all the heresies that have ever afflicted the Christian Church, and of the weakness of so much popular Christianity, is none other than this failure adequately to recognise the universality and the gravity of the fact of transgression. If a word comes to you, calls itself God’s message, and does not start with man’s sin, nor put in the forefront of its utterances the way by which the dominion of that sin in your own heart can be broken, and the penalties of that sin in your present and future life can be swept away, it is condemned, ipso facto, as not a gospel from God, or fit for man. O my brother! it sounds harsh; but it is the truest kindness, when Nathan stands before the king, and with his flashing eye and stern, calm voice says, ‘Thou art the man.’ Was not that nobler, truer, tenderer, worthier of God, than if he had smoothed David down with soft speeches that would not have roused his conscience? Is it not the truest benevolence that keeps the surgeon’s hand steady whilst his heart is touched by the pain that he inflicts, as he thrusts his gleaming instrument of tender cruelty into the poisonous sore? And are not God’s mercy and love manifest for us in this, that He begins all His work on us with the grave, solemn indictment of each soul by itself, ‘Thou art the man’?
‘He showed me all the mercy,
For He taught me all the sin.’
III. Lastly, let me say that God accuses us and condemns us one by one that He may save us one by one.
The meaning of Nathan’s sharp sentence was speedily disclosed when the broken-down king exclaimed, ‘I have sinned against the Lord,’ and when, with laconic force as great as that which barbed the condemnation, the prophet stanched the wound with the brief words, ‘And the Lord hath made to pass the iniquity of thy sin.’ The intention of the accusation is the extension of the mercy and forgiveness. God, as the Apostle puts it, ‘hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.’
And now, mark, for the carrying out of that divine purpose in regard to us, and for our possession of the proffered mercy, the same individualising and isolating process is needful as was needful for the conviction of the sin. God desires to save the world, but God can only save men one at a time. There must be an individual access to Him for the reception of forgiveness, as there must be in regard to the conviction of sin, just as if He and I were the only two beings in the whole universe. There is no wholesale entrance into God’s Church or into God’s kingdom. God’s mercy is not given to crowds, except as composed of individuals who have individually received it. There must be the personal act of faith; there must be my solitary coming to Him. As the old mystics used to define prayer, so I might define the whole process by which men are saved from their sins, ‘the flight of the lonely soul to the lonely God.’ My brother, it is not enough for you to say, ‘We have sinned’; say, ‘I have sinned.’ It is not enough that from a gathered congregation there should go up the united litany, ‘Lord, have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us! Lord, have mercy upon us!’ You must make the prayer your own: ‘Lord, have mercy upon me!’ It is not enough that you should believe, as I suppose most of you fancy that you believe, that Christ has died for the sins of the whole world. That belief will give you no share in His forgiveness. You must come to closer grips with Him than that; and you must be able to say, ‘Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.’ Let us have no running away into the crowd. Come out, and stand by yourselves, and for yourselves stretch out your own band, and take Christ for yourselves.
A man may die of starvation in a granary. You may be lost in the midst of this abundance which Christ has provided for you. And the difference between really possessing salvation and not possessing it, lies very largely in the difference between saying ‘us’ and ‘me.’ ‘Thou art the man’ in regard to the general accusation of sin; ‘Thou art the man’ in regard to the solemn law which proclaims that ‘the soul that sinneth it shall die’; and, blessed be God, ‘Thou art the man’ in regard to the great promise that says, ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink.’ Christ gives you a blank cheque in His word: ‘Whoso cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.’ Write thine own name in, and by thy personal faith in the Lamb of God that died for thee, thy sins shall pass away; and all the fulness of God shall be thy very own for ever. ‘If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself, and if thou scornest, thou alone shall bear it.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 David's Repentance and Pardon. The Capture of Rabbah
David's Repentance and Pardon. The Capture of Rabbah
4. To dress for the wayfaring man] We may notice Eastern ideas of hospitality: cp. Gen_18:3-5.
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5. Shall surely die] David's impulsive temper breaks out again: cp. 1Sa_25:22.
11. For the fulfilment of this threat, see 2Sa_16:21, 2Sa_16:22. David's repentance secured the forgiveness of God, but it did not avert the punishment of his sin.
13. Thou shalt not die] This was the punishment David himself had pronounced on the offender.
14. Thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme] There is little doubt that the original reading was, 'Thou hast blasphemed the Lord,' and that it was altered to avoid any appearance of irreverence.
23. I shall go to him] There is a suggestion here of belief in some form of continued existence beyond the grave.
24. Solomon] 'Peaceful.'
25. Jedidiah] 'Beloved of Jehovah.' It is curious that this name should have been laid aside in favour of his other name, Solomon.
27. The city of waters] i.e. the lower town of Rabbah, on the Jabbok. It received this name because of a perennial stream which rises within it and which still flows through it.
28. Encamp against the city, and take it] Now that the waters of the lower town were in the possession of the besiegers, the fate of the upper town, or citadel, was only a question of time.
30. Their king's crown] The reference is probably to Milcom, the god of the Ammonites (1Ki_11:5). His name is merely an altered form of Melech, i.e. 'king.' The weight of the crown (a talent of gold) renders it certain that no living person could have worn it for long.
31. Put them under saws, etc.] The Heb. must be translated, 'put them to saws,' i.e. set them to work at saws, and harrows, and axes. For the forced labour of captives, cp. 1Ki_9:15, 1Ki_9:21. Made them pass through the brickkiln] read, 'made them work at the brickmould.'
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 2. The Message of God and David’s Confession and…
2. The Message of God and David’s Confession and the Beginning of the Chastisement
CHAPTER 12
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1. The Lord’s message through Nathan (2Sa 12:1-4)
2. David’s anger (2Sa 12:5-6)
3. Thou art the man! (2Sa 12:7-9)
4. The chastisement (2Sa 12:10-12)
5. David’s confession (2Sa 12:13)
6. The death of the child announced (2Sa 12:14)
7. The death of the child and David’s grief (2Sa 12:15-23)
8. Solomon born (2Sa 12:24-25)
9. Rabbah taken (2Sa 12:26-31)
The Lord was displeased with what David had done. Nathan comes with his message in the form of a parable. His outburst of anger and condemnation of the injustice done to the poor man shows that he did not think of his own case. Yet sorrow and unrest were his portion; he tried to cover up his sin and as a result was in the deepest agony. Psalms like the sixth, the thirty-eighth, the thirty-second and others tell us of the deep soul exercise through which he passed. Then Nathan pointed at him with his soul piercing, “Thou art the man!” First the prophet tells him all the Lord had done for him; he reminds him of all God’s kindness. What had David done? He had despised the Lord’s commandment; had killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword and taken his wife. Then the chastisement is announced. He had slain Uriah with the sword of the children of Ammon--the sword should now never depart from his house. He had taken Uriah’s wife--others should take his wives. He had done it secretly--but, said Jehovah, I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun. We shall find the sentence executed in 2Sa 13:28-39; 2Sa 16:21-22; 2Sa 18:14.
Then the King’s heart broke. “I have sinned against the LORD.” It was at that time that, his soul filled with deepest sorrow, and yet illumined with the light from above, he uttered that wonderful penitential Psalm, the fifty-first. “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight, that Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest.” All the inward corruption now is revealed to him, as many a saint after him has found out by bitter experience that in our flesh there dwelleth no good thing. “Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psa 51:5). And when he prayed “take not Thy Holy Spirit from me”--he must have had a vision of Saul, the mad King, when the Spirit had left him and an evil one possessed his heart. But David knew God and God knew David. He is in the light and uncovers all in His presence. Then Nathan announced the divine mercy, “the LORD hath also taken away thy sin.” And Nathan added “because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.” That was the bitterness of it. Up to the present time infidels and rejectors of the Word of God point to David’s sin and blaspheme, though the very things they sneer at are the things which they practice. The child died and David’s grief was great. All his fasting and night long prayer did not change the divine sentence. But he also knew the comfort of hope and expresses it beautifully. “I shall go to him, but he shall not return unto me.”
And has it no meaning that Solomon’s birth is recorded immediately after these sad and solemn incidents? Solomon means “peaceful.” Peace had come to his heart; the divine favour was restored unto him, yet the chastisement grievous and sore would follow him in the future. And then the Lord named also Solomon. He called him “Jedediah.” This means “beloved of Jehovah.” He is the blessed type of God’s own Son. For us He is “peace”--He who hath made peace and our sin is covered by His precious blood. To God He is “the Beloved.” The record of the fall of Rabbah closes this chapter. What is recorded in verse 31 was cruel and barbarous. (However, there is a doubt about the translation. It has been rendered in the following way: “And he set them to saws and iron picks and iron axes and made them labor at the brick kiln.”) Ammon did horrible things to the women of Israel. (See Amo 1:13.) A fearful retribution came upon them. How often it has been repeated in history, even down to the 20th century with all its boasted civilization, now collapsed in the greatest and most awful war the world has ever witnessed. And thus it will continue to the end, till the true King comes.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 Nathan’s Reproof and its Success
Nathan’s Reproof and its Success
v. 1. And the Lord, almost a year after the first transgression, sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him and said unto him, There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor. Nathan chose the parable in order to bring home his reproof with all the greater force.
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v. 2. The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds, he is purposely represented as possessing all that his heart might desire;
v. 3. but the poor man had nothing, literally, "nothing at all. " save one little ewe lamb, the only property which his slender means allowed, which he had bought and nourished up; and it grew up together with him and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, since he shared even his last morsel with it, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, carefully tended and shielded against all harm and danger, and was unto him as a daughter. Note that all the circumstances are pictured in such a manner as to heighten both the pity and the indignation of the hearer.
v. 4. And there came a traveler unto the rich man, and he, the latter, spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd to dress for the way faring man that was come unto him, but, in an excess of base selfishness, took the poor man’s lamb and dressed it for the man that was come to him.
v. 5. And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man, as Nathan had intended for the sake of the effective application of his parable; and he said to Nathan, as the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die, literally, "is a son of death," since his robbery of the one ewe lamb was almost like that of a human being;
v. 6. and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, as the Law required, Exo 21:36, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity. The parable had been so chosen that David could have no idea of its application to his own crime against Uriah.
v. 7. And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. The accusation came with all the greater force since David was not aware of the fact that he himself was concerned. The wisdom, tact, and firmness with which Nathan approached the king are truly admirable. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, therefore his crime had been one against the royal office, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul, an act of divine kindness and grace;
v. 8. and I gave thee thy master’s house and thy master’s wives in to thy bosom, both the property and the harem of the king being legally given into the hands of his successor, although it does not follow that David actually married Saul’s wife, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; the entire nation had promised him allegiance, and he might have had his choice of the virgins of the country; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things; His bountiful goodness was not yet exhausted.
v. 9. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, literally, "the word," that is, the law, of God, to do evil in His sight, in this double transgression? Thou hast killed Uriah, the Hittite, with the sword, in fact, though not in person, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, she who still should have been Uriah’s wife now lived in a guilty marriage with David, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon, according to a well-laid plan.
v. 10. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from thine house, its bloodiness being evident in the murder of Amnon, the death of Absalom, and the execution of Adonijah; because thou hast despised Me, since he who despises God’s Word despises Him, and hast taken the wife of Uriah, the Hittite, to be thy wife. This was the first punishment. But more was to come.
v. 11. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, as a punishment for the sin of adultery, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives, in open, incestuous intercourse, in the sight of this sun.
v. 12. For thou didst it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun, in broad daylight, in flagrant shamelessness. Cf 2Sa 16:22.
v. 13. And David said unto Nathan, in full acknowledgment of his sin, without the slightest attempt at excusing himself or depreciating the sin, I have sinned against the Lord, His confession is given in only a few words, but the feelings of his heart are expressed in Psalms 51. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin, literally, "has caused thy sin to pass over," not to remain before Him, to vanish, to be forgiven; thou shalt not die, the punishment which his sin properly merited.
v. 14. Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, to despise the God of Israel for permitting such sins to be committed, for so they would construe the matter, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die, the fruit of the adulterous union would be destroyed, to show the severity of God’s justice upon the transgressors of His Lam. God has no pleasure in the death of the sinner, but wants him to repent and live. Even those who hare fallen into serious sins the Lord seeks with His Word and Spirit and admonishes them to repent. Note that the purpose of every reproof of sins is to move the heart and conscience of sinners, to cause them to forsake their transgressions, and to turn to the mercy and grace of God.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 4, 7, 9 ewe lamb
ewe lamb
a female lamb
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was like a daughter to him
This refers to the closeness of this man and his little lamb. AT: "he loved it as much as if it were one of his daughters" (See: Simile)
translationWords
Yahweh
Nathan
David
flocks
lamb
raise
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 12:1-31 Chapter 12 expands on the last phrase of…
12:1-31 Chapter 12 expands on the last phrase of 11:27.
12:1 The Lord sent Nathan to David at least nine months after his adulterous sin. • This story is a rare Old Testament instance of a parable (see also Judg 9:8-15). Such stories can be effective for communicating truth. • David was rich in the royal treasures he possessed, the number of wives he had, and all the promises of God for his future. Uriah by contrast was poor: he had one wife, one home, and no lineage.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.