2 Samuel 12:13 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

David said, I have sinned against the Lord Overwhelmed with shame, stung with remorse, and oppressed with a dreadful sense of the divine vengeance, impending, and ready to fall upon himself and his family, he could only give utterance to this short confession. How sincere and serious it was, what a deep sense he now had of his guilt, and from what a softened, penetrated, broken, and contrite heart, his acknowledgment proceeded, we may see in the psalms he penned on this occasion, especially the 1st. The Lord also hath put away thy sin That is, so far as concerns thy own life. Thou shalt not die As, according to thy own sentence, 2 Samuel 12:5, thou dost deserve, and mightest justly expect to do from God's immediate stroke; though possibly thou mightest elude the law before a human judicature, or there should be no superior to execute the law upon thee. There is something unspeakably gracious in this sudden sentence of pardon, pronounced by the prophet in the instant of David's confession of guilt and humiliation before God, even if we consider it as only implying exemption from the stroke of temporal death, and the granting him space for repentance, and for making his peace with God, with respect to his spiritual and immortal interests. And this seems to be the true light in which we ought to view it. If the psalm we have just mentioned was written after the event of Nathan's coming to him, as the title of it signifies, and as is generally allowed, it is evident David did not yet consider himself as pardoned by God, or in a state of reconciliation with him. For, in that psalm we find not any thanksgivings for pardon actually obtained, but several most fervent supplications and entreaties for it as a blessing not yet granted. It may, therefore, be true enough, as Dr. Delaney supposes, that David's pardon was not obtained by the instantaneous submission which he expressed, when he said, I have sinned; but that a long and bitter repentance preceded it; and yet that able divine may be mistaken, as it seems evident from the whole narrative he is, in supposing that repentance took place before Nathan was sent to him. The sacred historian gives no intimation of David's being awakened to a proper sense of guilt, or of his being made truly penitent for it, till the application of Nathan's parable. Then, and not before, it appears, he began to feel the compunction and distress expressed in that and the 32nd Psalm, during the continuance of which, day and night God's hand was heavy upon him: his moisture was turned into the drought of summer, and his bones waxed old through his roaring all the day long. Some time after, but how long we are not told, he was made a partaker of the blessedness of the man whose transgression is forgiven, and whose sin is covered; and that on his own certain knowledge and experience: for he says, I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.