Jeremy Duncan: If I read this and I immediately conclude that David is a scumbag, I'm right. But I also might, in that moment, be looking past a lot in my own life that I'm choosing not to see. And that's not all about letting David off the hook. Not for a second. He deserves everything that's coming to him.
It's about being honest with the things that I choose not to see about myself, so that maybe I can avoid what's coming for me down the line as well. Today, we are going to wrap up our series on the life of David. A series called Becoming King. And interestingly, David only became king last week. Today, however, we are going to narrate his downfall.
And hopefully, maybe you've been piecing together that this is all by design. There's a reason we called this series Becoming King, because primarily what we've wanted to focus on was the lead up and the build up, the anticipation to David's inevitable coronation. Everything before the power that corrupts brings David and his reign to their knees. However, before we get to the downfall, let's remember David's rise together. And to do that, let's look back across this entire series so far.
Six weeks ago, we started with Samuel, the last of the judges who is tasked with handing over power to the first king of Israel, a man named Saul. But when Saul fails his first test as king, Samuel is then tasked with anointing the second king of Israel. And here we were introduced to David, too young and too small, forgotten and left in the field with the sheep, while his brothers were paraded before the prophet who would choose the new king. And right from the start, we are getting this clear contrast with his predecessor. Saul was chosen, in large part, not getting here, because he was tall.
At least, that is the physical characteristic that the scriptures use to reinforce the narrative that Saul is chosen because he looks the part. Saul is the personification, in some sense, of all of our superficial expectations of each other. David, however, enters from stage left from the fields smelling like sheep and looking nothing like his predecessor. That does not mean he is not formidable though, Because in the next chapter, we saw David take on Goliath. Remember the Israelites and the Philistines are locked in a stalemate, and this giant of a champion, this uncircumcised Philistine by the name of Goliath taunts the Hebrew warriors.
Only David though has the guts to face him. And even on its story, this seems pretty aggrandized on its face. I mean, this kid David is going to take on this champion. There's even some question of whether David was actually the original hero of the tale. That's because in second Samuel 21, we are told that it was a man named Elhanan who fought and killed Goliath.
Now to be fair, First Chronicles, a few hundred years later, comes along and explains that Elhanan killed Goliath's heretofore known unknown and unnamed brother. A little convenient and suspect. So it's at least possible that Elhanan's glory was retroactively awarded to the would be king David. Still, this victory against Goliath both ingratiates David to Saul and sparked Saul's suspicion of David. And this leads to Saul's deteriorating mental state.
He's tormented by these evil thoughts. He attacks David, sends him into hiding. Oh well, Saul's son Jonathan becomes close. BFFs even with David. And here we see these two parallel narratives unfolding alongside David.
The insecurity of Saul, which leads to more fear and violence, and the profound security of Jonathan, who can prioritize his friendship above even his own personal interest. Sadly, however, this all leads to the death of both Saul and his son Jonathan in an ill advised battle motivated by that same insecurity. And that is the beginning really of the turning point in David's story. David so far has made every right decision. He comes from the field and is thrust into the spotlight, and yet he trusts himself and his God.
He refrains from violence when it's offered to him. He depends on the wisdom and the love of a friend to guide him. But now he's king. And in a new and unique way, he is now alone at the top. And as Bobby asked last week, I think we have to wonder, what would David's reign have been like had his friend Jonathan lived?
What would his reign have been like had David found a way to open himself up to another friendship like that in his life? Well, obviously, we can't know for sure, but I also can't help but imagine this is very much part of what the biblical writers want us to ponder. Because from here, unfortunately, everything goes south for David. So let's pray. And today is the downfall of the king.
Good and gracious God, we have journeyed with this man you chose to become king. Seen all the good in him. The faithfulness and the righteousness he lived into. Watched him rise to the throne he was promised. And yet we have seen the losses along the way.
The loss of innocence and peace. The loss of a friend closer than a brother. And along with these stories, we trace our own narratives, our dreams and ambitions pursued, some accomplished, some abandoned, and maybe forgotten. All the loss and hurt, the pain overcome, and some of it still maybe perhaps holding on to us in some ways. And so as we explore together David's final chapter, see the forks in the road laid before him, might we, just like earlier, see our lives in parallel with fresh eyes understanding the choices ahead of us.
May your spirit bring wisdom and grace and peace to our steps. And might we learn from it all as you attend in your word. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Today is David's downfall.
And we will cover war for the sake of war, rooftop encounters like father, like son, and finally learning from these lessons. But I do want to give a bit of a warning before we begin. We are dealing with stories today that involve sexual assault and violence. And that can be triggerating and retraumatizing for a number of people. I'll do my best to be sensitive as we deal with them.
I'm not gonna linger on those parts of the story any more than necessary. But I do wanna give you the chance to skip this one if that's a healthy choice for you. I totally get it. I understand. We support you.
That said, you probably know this quote. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. However, we may not have heard the full quote from Lord Acton, which continues, great men are almost always bad men. Even more when they exercise influence and not authority, still more though when you super add the certainty of corruption by authority. There is perhaps no better example of this anywhere in scripture than the story of David.
In fact, I would argue the story of David has been constructed specifically, explicitly to make this point. I mean, there's scarcely a hint of impropriety in David before he becomes king. At almost every point in the story so far, we have seen him choose well. And yet, as we saw last week in his first act as king, to transport the ark of the covenant in a way that God defies and goes against his commands, we see him lead into disaster. And if this was not understood as a bad omen for what is coming, understand the story only gets worse from here.
That's it. Being in charge is hard. Right? I have young kids. I have an 11 year old son and a five year old daughter.
And as much as it pains me to admit, there is a ruling aristocracy in our house. Now, Rachel and I, we try to be benevolent dictators whenever possible. But I am also ashamed to admit that more often than I would like, when asked, my answer is, because I said so. For example, we have a PlayStation in our house. I bought it for me.
It rarely gets used for its intended purposes. But I do like to play video games from time to time, except that even as a would be pacifist, many of the games I like to play involve, let's say, social dilemmas that I might avoid in real life, I. E. Guns. Now, if I were going to intellectualize this, I might argue that there's a place for cathartic fantasy in our lives, and that power narratives can actually help us return to life with more commitment to eschew those pursuits in our human relationships.
In fact, in my book, Upside Down Apocalypse, I quote the incredible scholar Adela Yarborough Collins, when she argues that part of what is happening in the book of Revelation is the author is playing out the violent fantasies of the readers in order to provide a cathartic release. Specifically, so that at the climactic moment, their attention can be refocused on the consequence of pursuing those agendas, and their commitment can be returned to the peaceful resistance of Jesus. At least, that's how I intellectualize it. When my son, who is not allowed to play violent video games, accidentally catches me playing a game he would not be allowed to play because he's supposed to be in bed right now, not sneaking downstairs for a snack. I rarely explain myself.
The answer is usually because I'm the king. Power corrupts absolutely. The thing is, that narrative is writ large in second Samuel. And after the story we saw last week, David goes on a real generational run. He routes his enemies.
He consolidates his power. He captures the city of Jerusalem from a Canaanite tribe called the Jebusites. And he establishes his capital. And he falls into a bit of a routine. You can see this in the transition between chapters ten and eleven.
At the end of 10, we read that David gathered all of Israel, crossed the Jordan, and went to Helem. The Arameans formed their battle lines to meet David and fought against him. But before they fled, Israel killed 700 of their chariots and 40,000 of their foot soldiers. He struck down Shobek, the commander of their army. And so when all the kings who were vassals saw that they had been routed by Israel, they made peace with the Israelites and became subject to them.
Victory after victory, expansion after expansion, everything is turning up David. But something important shifts here in the next verse. This is chapter 11 verse one. In the spring, at the time when kings go to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men's and the whole army of Israel. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rehba.
But David remained in Jerusalem. Two things here. No longer is David pursuing an agenda defined by God. Now he's just going out to war because, well, it's time for war. And second, no longer is David leading the armies.
Now, for the first time, David is sending representatives into battle whilst he stays at home in Jerusalem. There's a clear and marked shift from what happens in the previous chapters. And if you think I'm making too much of this one line, this is what David Alter, who happens to have written probably one of the best singular translations of the Hebrew scripture ever, says about this narrative shift. He says, chapters eleven and twelve, the story of David and Bathsheba and its immediate aftermath, they are the great turning point of the whole David story. It seems as though the writer has pulled out all the stops of his remarkable narrative art in order to achieve a brilliant realization of the crucial pivotal episode.
The deployment of thematic keywords, the shifting play of dialogue, the intricate relation between instruction and their execution, the cultivated ambiguity of motive, all orchestrated with a richness that scarcely has an equal in the ancient narrative. And it's not just Alter that sees a shift here. David Sosios Zamora, who I've leaned on a couple times in this series, he points out David doesn't just remain in Jerusalem. He sits at ease in Jerusalem. That's the intent of the verb.
He's comfortable while his servants risk their lives in warfare for him. This is a David that has been changed by power. And it's gonna be plainly obvious in a moment, but understand the writer is laying the groundwork here for what will come. So it's time for war, and David sallies forth his armies. Well, he stays at home.
Verse two. One evening, David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful. As Leonard Cohen might say, he saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty in the moonlight overthrew him.
By the way, David's up on the roof because that's probably where his bedroom was. In first Samuel nine, we find the prophet speaking with Saul on the roof of his house. The roof was, for the king in particular, a convenient location from which to survey his kingdom. Probably had the highest building in town. However, that's important because the roof was a functional part of a lot of homes, everyone's home at this time.
Hence, Bathsheba's bathing on the roof. Some people have tried to ascribe some kind of nefarious motive here to her bath. Honestly, it's just nonsense. The roof was likely, at most times, the most private option available to most people. It's not like there was internal plumbing feeding enclosed showers in these ancient homes.
But David sent someone to find out about her, and the man returned saying she is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite. Now to be clear, the bath part is just a coincidence. That pun obviously doesn't carry over into Hebrew. In fact, the bath part of Bathsheba's name means daughter. And so Bathsheba means daughter of Sheba, or maybe daughter of an oath, or perhaps even daughter of or daughter born on the seventh day.
We're not really sure here. What we do know is that her father is Eliam. And that very possibly, likely makes her the granddaughter of one of David's most trusted men, a man named Ahithophel the Gilaite. And her husband, Uriah, is one of David's thirty best warriors. Both of these men are named in the narrative for us.
That means all of these details we're being given here are like big, red warning, flashing signs telling us David knows exactly what he's doing, exactly who he's doing it to, and exactly how wrong he is to do all of this. And yet, David sent messengers to get her. She came to him. He slept with her. Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness, and then she went back home.
Couple things. But first of all, she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness. That's a weird insertion. It's a strange construction and kind of awkwardly stuck in here, hence why the English translators have put it in a parenthetical. However, the Hebrew construction is something we call wayyiktal.
And what that means is that this is a circumstantial clause subordinate to the primary clause. What that means is that this is related to why Bathsheba was on the roof in the first place. It calls back to that. It means the author is clarifying here that Bathsheba had just finished her period, which is why she was bathing, which is why there is no debate about who the father is when she finds out she's pregnant in the next verse. The author is making sure David has no outs here.
And just quickly, unclean in this circumstance does not mean dirty or bad or morally suspect. That is not how ancient Hebrews thought about a woman's menstrual cycle. This is about ritual purity. It's about someone preparing themself for communion with God. If anything, this narrative is showing Bathsheba in the best possible light that it can.
However, I have to talk about another phrase here. David sends messengers to get her. The verb here is lakaq. It means to take grasp or seize, to take away from someone, or to take as one's own property. On the other side of the equation, if you are being taken, it can mean to accept humiliation.
All of these, by the way, taken directly from the Hebrew Aramaic lexicon of the Old Testament, which is the primary lexicon that's used in scholarship today. This is not a neutral term. David did not just send someone to get her as if this was an invitation. In fact, I would argue the most damning evidence here is that this is precisely the term that was used in first Samuel eight. Do you remember that?
God warns the people how bad a king will be for them. And there, the same word is not translated get. It's translated take, as in God says, he will take your sons for his wars. He will take your daughters for his desires. Same word, lakak, that's used here as David sends someone to take Bathsheba.
Quote from doctor Will de Gaffney here. When David sends for Bathsheba, she does not have the option to refuse his invitation, nor do his men have the option to refuse to bring her. The description of her going with the messengers may suggest to modern readers that she complies or participates willingly. However, the absolute power of an ancient Near East Monarch combined with the absence of her husband's protection greatly reduces her ability to consent to the sexual encounter. Bathsheba going with David's soldiers on her own two feet should in no way be read as consent, but rather as her holding on to a shred of dignity by not being dragged before the king.
The story, however, only gets worse from here, because Bathsheba is now pregnant. And rather than own up to what he's done, David instead recalls Uriah from the battle, hoping that he'll come home, he'll sleep with his wife, and that will secret away David's sin. Uriah, though, distraught about his fellow soldiers being at war while he's at home, refuses to sleep with his wife. Doubling down, David tries to get him drunk, and he drops him off at home to see if that will help. But Uriah still refuses.
Finally, David sends Uriah back to the battle, this time with an order for his generals to place him out front and then leave him stranded when the fighting starts. Let's point out the obvious here. Refusing to own our mistakes, attempting to hide them, paper over them, only ever makes everything worse. Because now David is a rapist and a murderer. And somehow, the story only gets worse from here.
Chapter 12. The Lord sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, there were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. And the rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle. But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought.
He raised it, and he grew up with him and his children. He shared his food, drank from his cup, even slept in his arms. And it was like a daughter to him. But when a traveler came to the rich man, the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal. Instead, he took the little ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come.
David burned with anger against this man and said to Nathan, as surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die. He must pay for that lamb four times over. How could he do such a thing having no pity? And Nathan said to him, David, you are that man. Not really sure.
There's a lot to add here. Nathan does just a wonderful job of demonstrating how easy it is for us to see sin at a distance and how difficult it can be to spot it the closer it gets. Now think of it like this. If you hold out your finger from you at a distance, you can see it. You can focus on it.
In fact, the weight of your arm means you can barely even ignore it. And yet the closer you bring it to your face, the closer you bring it until finally you're touching your nose, you know, at that point, you can still see it. You know it's there. But it's almost easier to just look past it. I I don't think for a second that David didn't know what he has done was wrong.
He doesn't need Nathan to tell him that. He needs Nathan to remind him about everything that he is choosing to look past simply because he wants to look past it. And you know what I find particularly scary about reading Nathan's story here is just how easy it is for me to see the point when it's pointed at David. I mean, that's the whole point of the story. Right?
If I read this and I immediately conclude that David is a scumbag, I'm right. But I also might, in that moment, be looking past a lot in my own life that I'm choosing not to see. And that's not all about letting David off the hook. Not for a second. He deserves everything that's coming to him.
It's about being honest with the things that I choose not to see about myself so that maybe I can avoid what's coming for me down the line as well. Because somehow the story only gets worse from here. Chapter 13 verse one. In the course of time, Amnon, son of David, fell in love with Tamar, the beautiful sister of Absalom, son of David. And Amnon became so obsessed with his sister Tamar that he made himself ill.
She was a virgin. It seemed impossible for him to do anything to her. Verse 11, he grabbed her and he said, come to bed with me, my sister. But she replied, no, my brother. Don't force me.
Such a thing should not be done in Israel. Don't do this wicked thing. And people have argued that because the text goes on in the next verse to explicitly use the word rape for this story, over and against the more coercive nature of David's transgressions, maybe we should think about these two sins differently. Honestly, I don't see how you can read these two stories about father and son back to back and not understand exactly what the writer is trying to do. Amnon's not the victim here.
He's very much responsible for his choices, but he is also the product of his father's household. And again, understand these stories are scaled up for us. Right? Most of us are not failing as spectacularly as David. Most of us are not given the responsibility over kingdoms he was either.
But the writer is absolutely trying to tell all of us that our choices, our sins, have impacts far beyond our constrained imaginations for them. When the scriptures talk about generational sin or generational curses, that's none about witchcraft or God holding your dad's mistakes against you. The scriptures tell us, expectedly, that God does not do that. No. What this is about is the way that our sin, the way that our mistakes can outgrow us to then weigh down the people that we love as well if we don't take responsibility for them.
Look, I can't identify with the scale of David's story, but I can already absolutely see the way that my kids, even my adopted kids, are beginning to look a lot like Rachel and myself. Stories like this are meant to tell us to be mindful of how damaging sin can be when left unchecked in our house. Do I let my hurts spill out onto my kids? Will I do the work to heal my anxieties before they become theirs? Will I trust that there is a path that god has laid out for me that is about a lot more than just where I go when I die, but about the influence and the legacy that I will leave on those that I care most about in this world.
Because if we don't see that yet, just know the story only gets worse from here. Now Absalom can't believe that his father David doesn't act decisively against Amnon. So he takes matters into his own hands, and he orchestrates the execution of his brother. This pits him against his father David, and he's forced to go into exile. He returns and he begins to undermine his father's rule, eventually leading to a coup that even forces David to flee the capital.
A civil war ensues, and against his commands, one of David's generals assassinates his son Absalom. And David is returned to the throne, but now a broken and grieving man. In fact, of all of his sons, it's Bathsheba's second son, Solomon, that succeeds him. She is, in a sense, the only one that is vindicated in this long, sordid tale. So here's the question.
What do we do with all of this? How can a story that ends so poorly teach us anything about ending well? Well, as I offered in the opening of this series, I think we have to keep our wits about us, and we approach the story of David honestly. Because honestly, there is a lot of good, a lot of beauty, a lot of poetry, a lot of grace in the story. There are a lot of lessons to learn from David's tale.
And we would be worse off to ignore any of them. But we would be even worse off to pretend they are the full story. Because on the other side of those lessons, there is sexual assault and violence, a broken family, a mountain of hurt that carries forward for generations of David's descendants. And my concern is that if we only pay attention to the first half of the story, we might find ourselves living some form of the second. Maybe not as glorious and certainly not as painful, but I am absolutely not interested in playing out the ark of David's life in mine.
I want something different for me and for you. And that means I have to pay attention to all of it. If we celebrate the king and we ignore what he becomes, then we risk learning the hard way that getting everything we want is too much for any of us, even for a man chosen after God's heart. Let's pray. Gracious God, we are grateful for these stories, for the heights and the beauty and the grace, but also for the depths and the grieving, the lament that we experience even as we read them.
We're grateful that these stories have now been sanitized and cleaned up to give us heroes to look up to but nothing to learn from on the other side. Instead, we are drawn into the mess of what it means to be human, the frailty and the morality, the tendency for all of us to dive head first into the muck. And we pray that as we read the whole tale, as we trace our journeys beside it, we might actually be able to sidestep that ending to hear the call of your spirit, to be enlivened to the path of peace ahead of us, and to perhaps find a new way through this world. As we enter into the season of Lent, a season where we remind ourselves about how frail, how broken, how mortal we all are, and yet how even the journey through death leads us to infinite love. Life that extends even where we thought there was none left.
We pray that that reminder would draw us ever closer back to the heart of your grace and your peace, your love that sits at the founding of not just our lives, but everything that we encounter. May that story guide us, and may we choose differently than David. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Hey.
Jeremy here. And thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at commons, you can head to our website commons.church for more information. You can find us on all of the socials at commons church. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community.
You can also join our Discord server. Head to commons.church/discord for the invite and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week.
We'll talk to you soon.