Grace and Offense

“Then David comforted his wife, Bathsheba, and went in to her, and lay with her; and she bore a son, and called his name Solomon. And the Lord loved him, and sent a message to Nathan the prophet; so he called his name Jedidiah, because of the Lord.”

-2 Samuel 12: 24-25

Church folks are familiar with this story. David has firmly taken the throne of Israel and is expanding the kingdom, and is concluding a war with Ammon. While walking on the roof of the palace, he sees a woman bathing on a rooftop below. In an act of lust and power, he has her brought to his bed. She conceives a child, and in desperation, David recalls her husband Uriah from the war, hoping that he will sleep with his wife, and the child can be passed off as his. Uriah as an honorable man refuses to take advantage of the amenities of home while his fellow soldiers are in the field. David has him killed in the subsequent battle and takes Bathsheba into the palace.

Nathan the prophet confronts David (who repents) and predicts the death of the child and a season of discipline at the hand of God. The child dies, and a series of disasters fall on David’s family and the kingdom: rape, fratricide, an attempted coup and the death of Absalom, and recurring rebellion and tension between Judah and the other tribes of Israel. David bears with all this patiently. But the innocence of the “sweet psalmist” and the humility he manifested during Saul’s reign are sullied.

In the middle of the author’s narrative comes the passage I quoted above. It is counter-intuitive and breaks the logical flow of the story. Bathsheba is called David’s “wife,” indicating that both God and the prophet accepted her new status. Bathsheba becomes queen (earlier wives are not mentioned), and becomes an influence at court in David’s latter reign and the beginning of Solomon’s. In addition, her second “legal” child is special to God and called Jedidiah (“beloved of God”) by the prophet, and is heir apparent to the throne. If we were to “type” this passage, we would say that God is comforting David with a coming day of peace (“Solomon” is a derivative of shalom), pointing to the final eschatological kingdom of the Messiah, and a promise that David’s line would continue forever.

My teachers of old told me to never to preach a sermon or do a Bible study without a practical application. OK. But at that point we run into several dangers. One of the most common ways to apply the gritty stories of the Old Testament is to moralize, to look for some timeless (but trite) truth that we can apply to our own lives. Sunday School teachers of small children have reinforced this approach for decades. The moral of the story of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar is that we should never run ahead of God. David and Goliath teach us that even the weakest person can overcome huge obstacles. Daniel in the lions’ den warns us to be faithful to God no matter what (I never heard the part about the children of Daniel’s persecutors whose bone were broken before they hit the floor). The moral point of the passage we are considering is that no matter how tough times get, there is a bright future.

Moralising is a shallow way to deal with earthy biblical passages, and can be found in any secular self-help literature. A much safer and rewarding approach to Old Testament interpretation is to see God, not the human characters, as the central actor in the biblical narrative. Since the Bible declares itself to be the Word of God, it only makes sense to look for what it tells us about Him. And since Jesus is declared to be the living Word, it is correct exegesis to look for Him through its pages, including the old covenant. I have already alluded to the fact that Christ is revealed through the reign of the “king of peace,” and that there is a hint of the coming of Messiah in the propagation of David’s line. In addition, David himself is a representation of a coming Priest-King. There is also a fresh revelation of the grace of God manifested in the midst of human sin. One might even make reference to the doctrine of election.

All these theological points exceed moralizing, but I want to suggest that while they satisfy the intellect, the Word of God has not yet reached the heart. There is still one more interpretive step. The next question is not “What do I think?” but “How do I engage personally with Christ in the text?” At this point I have to ask how I really feel when I read 2 Samuel 12:24-25. And I have to answer: I feel irritated. I know it is politically incorrect to quote Gone with the Wind, but my response at first is, “It ain’t fittin’, it ain’t fittin’, it just ain’t fittin'." It is not just right of God to exalt the child of a relationship that began in murder and adultery. It is not right to raise the woman involved into a place of preeminence. It is not right for David not to be impeached, deposed, or stoned. It is obviously not right for God to bring such grace into the midst of such wickedness. Every time I read this passage, the Pharisee in me rises up not only in indignation, but with anger at God. Now I am getting somewhere. The Word of God has backed me in to corner and said, “Gotcha!” Now the Word has exposed my heart.

I also feel surprised; surprised by an unwarranted, unmerited, bright and shining grace that obliterates all the darkness of lust and evil intent. I am consequently forced to back off and sulk, or accept the impossible reality that you and I are Jedidiah, beloved in spite of and far beyond our dark histories, because a greater than Solomon has come.