Our assigned lectionary text from the Hebrew Scriptures for today is from the eleventh chapter of Second Samuel. It comes at the point that David was at the peak of his political and religious power. The first ten chapters of Second Samuel are mostly war chronicles recounting David’s rise to power, such as the war against the Edomites where David established a great name for himself when his forces killed eighteen thousand enemy troops in the battle of the Valley of Salt. (8:13) Later, when David’s army routed the Arameans with their powerful horses and chariots, David became the undisputed ruler from Egypt to the Euphrates. In fact, he was the most powerful ruler in that part of the world in his day, the early tenth century before the Christian era.
As we saw last week, David established a new capitol in Jerusalem and built himself a fine palace. To top it all off, the prophet Samuel had given David the dramatic promise from God that, “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me, your throne shall be established forever.” (7:16) From humble roots as a shepherd boy, David was now on top of the world.
And then comes one of the most amazing plot twists in the Bible. Walter Brueggemann, in his commentary on Second Samuel, says what happens next is a pivotal turning point, where we are “invited into the presence of delicate, subtle art. We are at the threshold of deep, aching psychology.” (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: First and Second Samuel. John Knox Press. 1999. P. 171-2.) Second Samuel 11 begins with these words: In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged (their capital) Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. For the first time since he began his ascent to power, David could relax enough to send others without him to do his work. There is a significant shift here when the leader of the country is now shielded from the realities of war, similar to our country’s leadership today who plan wars while they themselves are shielded from their horrors.
David was experiencing what, until that point in his life, had been a rare thing for him. He has spare time on his hands. He appears to be bored, idly lying around on his couch and then aimlessly walking around on the roof of his palace. The text says, It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful.
Over the years, commentators and artists have pondered whether this woman’s bathing was somehow an act of seduction, deliberately bathing in a place open to the king’s palace. But there is no indication of that in the story. As the narrator will later make quite clear, what happened next was entirely David’s doing.
We are told, David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Now David knows who she is—and whose she is. Note that she is identified by the men to whom she belongs, as if she has no existence of her own. In fact, she will not even be called by her own name in the rest of this story. She was married to a soldier away at war serving in David’s army. This might have given David pause but it does not. By this time in his life, David has acquired six wives and numerous concubines. You would think this would be more than enough to satisfy his sexual appetite. But it is not.
The narrator tells what happened next with an amazing economy of words powered by verbs in short phrases. “So David sent messengers to fetch her, and when she came to him, he had intercourse with her though she was still being purified after her period. And then she went home.” (NEB Version)
Brueggemann says, “The action is quick. He sent, he took, he lay. (v. 4) The royal deed of self-indulgence does not take long. There is no adornment to the language…. The action is so stark. There is nothing but action. There is no conversation. There is no hint of caring, of affection, of love—only lust. David does not call her by name, does not even speak to her.” (p. 273) There is no sense that the woman had any say in the matter. The king uses his power to satisfy his lust and then sends her away. As far as he was concerned, the one-night stand was over. But then comes this. The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.” At the end of the encounter, she is only ‘the woman.’ She speaks for the first time, and only these words, but they are shattering; “I am pregnant.” Note ‘the woman’ makes no demand or threat. Her words say enough and say it all. (Brueggemann, P. 273)
David acts quickly, scheming to get control of the situation. So David sent word to (his general) Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going. Uriah must have been quite surprised to have the general pick him to return to Jerusalem to give a report on how things were going at the front to King David himself. After what David wants to appear to be a friendly chat between two military men, Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.”
This phrase is euphuistic. David tells him to go home and clean up and have a little intimate time with his wife. He probably gave him a wink and a tap on the shoulder. Go enjoy yourself; you deserve it after your time on the battlefront. Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king. David sent down some wine or something to help make things romantic. His strategy is clear. If Uriah can sleep with his own wife before he knows what’s going on, he will later assume he is the father of the child. David can cover up the whole messy affair. But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.”
What a stark contrast between the principles of Uriah and those of David. Remember, Uriah is not even an Israelite. He is like one of the soldiers who fight in the U.S. army from other countries who are not even U.S. citizens. But he is so loyal that he will not even sleep with his own wife while his fellow soldiers, and the ark of God itself, are facing danger in the field.
David had not counted on this. Desperate, David tries one more time. Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day, David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.
Now it is almost a comedy. Here is the king pretending to be all chummy with Uriah, bringing out the best wine and when Uriah is drunk, saying, “Go on home and enjoy yourself.” We can only guess at what Uriah may have suspected when the king was suddenly so chummy with an ordinary soldier in the field. But even when drunk, Uriah had more restraint than David had sober. David sat looking at him passed out on the couch and plotted a darker plan.
In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.” Obedient to the end, Uriah carried a letter with his own death sentence to David’s general, who carries it out without flinching, the kind of hatchet man every king needs to do his dirty work.
As Joab was besieging the city, he assigned Uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant warriors. The men of the city came out and fought with Joab; and some of the servants of David among the people fell. Uriah the Hittite was killed as well.” But Jaob is shrewd enough to cover himself too. Joab knows that “the report to the king must be prepared carefully. The report is more important than the act itself. Powerful people must frame things very carefully. Joab takes time to tell the messenger (press officer) exactly what to say. Joab is aware that he has used what was militarily a foolish strategy. He does not want to be blamed for such a strategy. He wants to make sure that David understands that such a strategy was necessary for the elimination of Uriah.” (Brueggemann, p. 277)
Then Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting; and he instructed the messenger, “When you have finished telling the king all the news about the fighting, then, if the king's anger rises, and if he says to you, ‘Why did you go so near the city to fight? Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? Who killed Abimelech son of Jerubbaal? Did not a woman throw an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebez? Why did you go so near the wall?’ then you shall say, ‘Your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead too.’”
So the messenger went, and came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell. The messenger said to David, “The men gained an advantage over us, and came out against us in the field; but we drove them back to the entrance of the gate. Then the archers shot at your servants from the wall; some of the king's servants are dead; and your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also.”
David half listens to all the details about the battle, even the accounts of soldiers he knew had needlessly died lost, until he finally hears what he wants to hear. He breathes a sigh of relief. David said to the messenger, “Thus you shall say to Joab, ‘Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another; press your attack on the city, and overthrow it. And encourage him.’”
David’s message back to Joab is in code and amazingly cynical. In fact, David has grown more and more cynical all through this story. Do not feel guilty, he tells Joab, this is the way of war. People die all the time in war. Don’t let it bother you. David was also saying that he was not going to let it bother him.
When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. As you can see, she still has no name and no voice in the matter.
The cover-up was complete. The people were touched that the king had taken into the palace a gallant soldier’s widow. There is no indication whatsoever that David had an ounce of remorse. No one knew a thing except the king’s loyal man, Joab, and he would never talk. No one else knew. Except for the one that David had forgotten about. The next line says, But what David had done was wrong in the eyes of the Lord. (NEB) This part of the story ends with this ominous word. David almost got away with adultery and deceit and murder, but not quite. It did not escape God’s notice. David will be exposed and the consequences will be severe. But that is a story for another day. For now, we are left to contemplate this story.
What is most amazing about this story is that it is in the Bible at all. After all, David is God’s chosen one. “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me, your throne shall be established forever.” You would think that a story that makes David look so bad would have been edited out. In fact, in another account of David’s reign recorded in Chronicles, this episode is omitted. But the writer of Second Samuel faces it head on.
He wants us to know that no matter who we are or how powerful we might be, God’s grace does not protect us from our own bad choices. If God’s anointed one can screw things up so horribly, then of course, so can we. As Brueggemann says, “The writer has cut very, very deep into the strange web of foolishness, fear, and fidelity that comprises the human map…This narrative is more than we want to know about David and more than we can bear to understand about ourselves.”
There are many relevant issues this story raises for our culture and us individually. This is a story of sexual violence. The fact that over the years this aspect has been de-emphasized is telling. Typical of this is Darryl F. Zanuck’s classic 1951 film, David and Bathsheba starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward. The film presents Uriah as a soldier who has no interest in his wife, David as lonely in his royal office, and Bathsheba as a neglected wife who finds her true love in David. This has absolutely no basis in this scripture. David has no interest in an ongoing relationship or a marriage until she becomes pregnant and then he prefers the solution of making Uriah the father. The New Interpreter’s Bible in Twelve Volumes. P. 1289) Romances do not begin with taking a woman who has no voice in the matter and end with murder. This is closer to rape than romance. There is still way too much in our culture that romanticizes violence and the abuse of women.
That this story of sexual violence occurs in the middle of stories recounting the violence of war points to a connection between the two. David had been so long immersed in war that he is dehumanized, seeking sex without meaning and willing to murder without hesitation. David had placed his faith in the power of force, as so many in the world today have. Starting wars on the basis of lies and cover-ups leads only to more lies and cover-ups. Fighting terror with only violence creates a never-ending spiral. For every terrorist you kill while also killing innocent people you help create more terrorists.
Jesus’ way of nonviolent conflict resolution seems naďve even to Christians but just look at where naďve belief in the transforming power of violence is getting us.
At the Baptist Peace Fellowship meeting, I attended a workshop with Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb. One of the things she said has stayed with me. “When someone asks you which side you are on say, the side of peace.”
But this story of David is not just about those in political power but challenges each of us to face our own complicity in using others for our own needs and even the ways we participate in the cycle of violence. Brueggemann says it well, “If we face this text at all, we are soon invited behind all the critical, scholarly questions to face the harder questions of human desire and human power—desire with all its delight, power with all its potential for death.” (p. 272)
In the story ahead, David will suffer some tragic consequences for his immoral behavior. But this is not completely a story about the fall from grace. Despite all these horrible things, David remains God’s chosen one. There is no better example that God loves us exactly like we are, at our best and at our worst.
But to fully appreciate and understand that love, we have to admit and know who we are at our best, and as important, who we are at our worst. Otherwise, what we have is cheap grace, rather than God’s amazing grace. That phrase, amazing grace, cherished by so many because of the hymn, was written by a man involved in one of the most evil enterprises ever schemed where African people were used and abused for the economic benefit of others. John Newton’s mother died when he was six and by age seventeen he was in the British Royal Navy. He became a sailor on a slave ship. Eventually, he became a captain, transporting captured Africans to ports where they would be sold as slaves. In 1748 he was caught in a storm at sea and experienced a spiritual awakening. Newton saw himself as the wretch that he was which made possible a transformation. (Presbyterian Hymnal Companion. P. 280) Newton wrote his own epitaph, which reads:
John Newton
Clerk
Once an Infidel and Libertine
A Servant of Slaves in Africa
Was
By the Rich Mercy of Our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ
Preserved, Restored, Pardoned
And Appointed to Preach the Faith
He Had Long Labored to Destroy
(All Biblical quotes from the New Revised Standard Version.)