CRITICAL AND EXPOSITORY NOTES
2 Samuel 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.)
2 Samuel 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. (Exodus 21:36.)
2 Samuel 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.)
2 Samuel 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.)
2 Samuel 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.
2 Samuel 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 (2 Samuel 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.)
2 Samuel 12:11. “I will take thy wives.” The two crimes of murder and adultery were to be visited by distinct and separate punishments. (See 2 Samuel 14:22.)
2 Samuel 12:13. “Thou Shalt not die.” What is the exact meaning of these words as applied to David?… The application of the law (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 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 Ezekiel 18:4; Ezekiel 18:13, etc. (Biblical Commentary.)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 2 Samuel 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 (Psalms 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 (2 Corinthians 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, (Mark 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.” (Psalms 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.” (1 John 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
2 Samuel 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.
2 Samuel 12:2. The greater was his sin, since pressed with no necessity. What need had the angels to leave their first estate and habitation? (Jude 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.
2 Samuel 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.
2 Samuel 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 2 Kings 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.
2 Samuel 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 (Matthew 21:33-42); in the history of Caiaphas (Mark 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.
2 Samuel 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.
2 Samuel 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.