1 Samuel Lesson 59

David deals faithfully with the house of Saul; David & Bathsheba – 2 Samuel 9 & 11:1-5

In our study of 2 Samuel we have come to that section, chapters 8-12 that deal with how God is providing for David’s kingdom to become a worldwide power. In chapter 8 we found the catalogue of military victories. This catalogue of military victories is important because as we taught, this is one of those passages of Scripture that teach a divine viewpoint imperialism. It is something that is not often brought out in fundamental circles and yet it is clearly there in the text. Then chapter 10 and chapter 12:26-31 deal with one of these campaigns, the Aramean-Ammonite campaign. Then chapter 9, these chapters are not in chronological order so you have to watch it; all the Bible is not written in chronological order. Chapter 9 has to do with dynastic succession which we’ll cover tonight, and then the last section, chapters 11-12, up to verse 25 deal with how David brings cursing down upon his court and how yet God’s grace is fantastic and even while David is bringing cursing down on his court, there’s going to be a young boy born of David and Bathsheba who turns out to be the line of Messiah, Solomon.

Summarized, this is what we’re looking at now. The book of 2 Samuel, from chapter 2-12 deals with how God blesses David. In chapter 13-20 God curses David. All the emphasis, from chapters 2-12 have to do with David’s public victories. From chapter 13-20 all of David’s public ministries are dropped, for all we know David is living in a historic vacuum. It’s a very strange thing and you don’t notice it, the reason you don’t notice it is because of the skill of the author but unless someone points this out to you, you’ll just read right by and never notice that something strange happens right about chapter 12. From that point forward not one of David’s military is emphasized, not as far as policy, the entire point of that portion are court intrigues and it degenerates into chaos. We have plots, we have revolt, we have rape, we have murder, we have David making some of the most stupid decisions that can be imaginable for a man who made these brilliant decisions in the first part of the book. He makes decisions that are utterly ridiculous and that lead to the near collapse of his kingdom. Some of his most trusted advisors are thrown out and assassinated, the men who served him well. We have David finally winding up in senility in 1 Kings 1-2; he winds up as a senile old man, a very pathetic end to a believer who had such great promise. So we are close to a turning point.

There are a lot of sub themes that I’ve tried to indicate. One of the themes that runs through this is that God’s promises are going to be fulfilled, regardless of the chaos, regardless of all of the threats to the dynasty, regardless of the fact that it seems like those promises are never going to come true, God’s Word abides forever. And when God has decreed, as He did in 2 Samuel 7, that David’s family would be throne-type family forever, then David’s family would be. So the promise and the fulfillment.

Then we find a change in David’s soul and here is where a very interesting thing begins to occur and we pay attention we learn a lot, as many of you have from watching Saul and David, you’re going to learn things about your own soul and how disastrous carnality is in the life of a believer, how David was strengthened and he was enlightened all during this period up to chapter 12. And beginning in chapter 13 and going through chapter 20 his soul is gradually weakened and he is blinded to spiritual reality; he begins acting like an idiot. David’s seed, his children, the children who are potential qualifiers for the promise of 2 Samuel 7, three are prominent though David had more sons than these, Amnon was his firstborn; Amnon was the boy who was the favorite, he would have inherited the throne if it had been by normal dynastic regulations. Absalom was a son that David just went crazy over and finally almost broke his heart when his son was killed; Absalom almost kill his father in a revolt. Adonijah was another son of David who tried to commit treason against his father.

The family of David had some very rough times in this period. Amnon rapes his sister and Absalom kills him for raping his sister, it’s his true sister, Amnon’s half-sister. And all this kind of intrigue goes on in the family and it’s all hanging out for everybody to see. And the reason is that God wants us to understand the makeup of humanity and in particular wants us to understand that true leadership can only be by a perfect man, the Lord Jesus Christ. So while David is secure in the promise, his family is in a mess. And finally, later on, the real heir to the throne, Solomon is born, not along the original seed.

In fact, after Solomon’s birth he is never mentioned once until he becomes king. Solomon is the dark horse in the race, he’s never noticed. And if you just think a moment, 2 Samuel was written after, this book you’re reading, although you’re reading as though it’s happening in front of your eyes, the book itself was written after Solomon attained the throne. Why was 2 Samuel written? Many authors have suggested that 2 Samuel, from the human level, was written to justify Solomon, because you can imagine, for years and years, thousands upon thousands of people in the nation Israel heard everything about Adonijah, they heard about Amnon, they heard about Absalom, they heard about all these things, these sons were in the limelight, no one ever heard of Solomon. Solomon who? Who’s Solomon. And yet by God’s sovereign choice it’s an unknown, a boy that is completely apart from all the carrying on that goes on, a boy that when he becomes king doesn’t try to usurp the throne by works, he’s given it by grace. Solomon is the dark horse.

And just as God promise is certainly secure in fulfillment, so the man that you see that gives stability to the whole thing, when everything falls apart, the man who’s constantly there, seen behind the scenes, Nathan, Nathan the prophet. So that’s the story of the turbulence and the stability that we’re going to enter in on and that’s the big picture; we’ll come back to this again.

In chapter 9 we come to a passage that shows how David dealt faithfully with the house of Saul. Now again, chronologically chapter 21 fits between chapter 8 and 9; chapter 21 occurs before chapter 9. Now all of Saul’s sons, by 9:1 have died because “David said, Is there yet any who is left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan’s sake?” Something has happened and what has happened is described in chapter 21. Now what is David’s interest? He says “that I may show kindness,” that’s chesed, there’s the Hebrew word for loyal love. Chesed is the Hebrew word that means loyalty to a prior covenant; it means a verbal agreement has been made and you are faithful to that verbal agreement. It is different from the other word, ahav, ahav love means a sovereign love, I choose to love. To illustrate again, ahav would be two single people in love, chesed, two married people because they are loving within the framework of an oath. So there obviously is an oath that underlies the word “kindness” in verse 1.

Turn back to 1 Samuel 20:15 you’ll see where that oath agreement was made. Now David probably is sorry he ever made it, but David is a man of integrity who keeps his word. This is when he was talking to Jonathan and Jonathan said, verse 14, “And thou shalt not only while yet I live show me the kindness of the LORD, that I die not, [15] But also you shall not cut off your chesed” or loyal love, “from my house forever; no, not when the LORD has cut off the enemies of David, every one from the face of the earth.” [16, “So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, Let the LORD even require it at the hand of David’s enemies. [17] And Jonathan caused David to swear again….”] Now that was prophecy at the time it was written, please notice. However, though it was prophecy at the time it was written, where we are now that is coming true. So the agreement between Jonathan and David, mentioned in 1 Samuel 20:15, also mentioned in 1 Samuel 24:21, here Saul petitions David, “Swear now, therefore, unto me by the LORD, that you will not cut off my seed after me, and that you will not destroy my name out of my father’s house. [22] And David swore unto Saul.” In other words, the property would be carried in the family name. They didn’t have inheritance tax. They had rather a divine viewpoint system of legislation, then the property could be kept in the family.

Now it’s that agreement that David shows loyalty to in verse 1. Now to do this David has got to trust the Lord. Chapter 9 is the last time you see David functioning like we know the great believer he is. After this things begin to deteriorate, but here he’s functioning as a fantastic believer because he is doing something that no king of the Ancient East ever did, nor would any bright politician try. And that is to leave alive possible heirs to the throne. You see, what’s happened is that Saul’s family has been eliminated. Saul’s sons have all been eliminated. Jonathan, one of Saul’s sons has been eliminated but he has a son. This son, Mephibosheth, is going to be the only heir possible. Michal, Saul’s daughter, has become barren, so therefore there can’t be any seed born to her. So the whole house of Saul is cut off except for this one person.

Now this isn’t just some little trivial thing that’s going on here. You have to understand Ancient Near Eastern politics, understand the Bible in the time it was written. In this time in history for anyone ever to permit a possible heir to the throne to be alive and breathing while you were king was essentially committing political suicide; it was a very, very foolish move, from the human point of view. But David could do none other than to trust God at His Word. And so David is going to, and that’s the whole story behind this chapter. He goes and he finds a servant, called Ziba. This Ziba was a very luxurious servant under Saul, Ziba had 15 sons, and he is listed as having 20 servants under him, so you can see he is quite a caretaker of Saul’s property. [2, “And there was of the house of Saul a servant, whose name was Ziba. And when they had called him unto David, the king said unto him, Art thou Ziba? And he said, Thy servant is he. [3] And the king said, Is there not yet any of the house of Saul, that I may show the kindness of God unto him? And Ziba said unto the king, Jonathan has yet a son, who is lame on his feet.”

Mephibosheth is the lame son, in verse 4, “And the king said unto him, where is he? And Ziba said, Behold, he is in the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, from Lord Jesus Christ-debar.” And he is lame on his feet because of a little notice given in 4:4, the nurse dropped him when they were fleeing from the battle at Mt. Gilboa. So here we have a seed of Saul, still alive but lame. And what you are seeing is a tremendous picture of grace because ironically, and 2 Samuel from this point is one of the most fantastic ironic novels ever written, in fact some scholars have said that this represents one of the world’s first great novels; it is called the succession narrative, it begins technically in 2 Samuel 9 and finishes in 1 Kings 2, but this passage of the Bible is considered to be one of the world’s greatest and first novels, a form of literature that didn’t really develop in our own civilization until the 18^th century. So here we have a literary masterpiece and you will see irony operate over and over and over in this narrative. One of the features of the author or authors who wrote this is they never made judgments on the people; they always make the people through speech give you a presentation of their own character so you make the judgment; it’s a very skillfully written document.

But this point of the document deals with Mephibosheth, and Mephibosheth is going to be allowed to eat at David’s table. This is a picture of complete helplessness. Look at the analogy here because the analogy is going to teach us something about what’s happening to David. David is acting toward Mephibosheth as the Lord is shortly going to act toward David. David has made, in grace, an agreement. The agreement was the Jonathan agreement, that he would keep his sons alive; that’s the word, that binds his action. So David, though he may not like the idea of keeping an heir, must honor his word. David has made in grace a pledge, and David being a man of character is going to fulfill his pledge. That’s the Jonathan agreement.

Now the Lord has made an agreement with David, 2 Samuel 7, that David’s dynasty will be secure forever, eternal security. Now, even though God has made that pledge, as you read here, you’re going to wonder, how can God keep the pledge, with all of this stuff, this chaos going on in the house of David, how can this dynasty succeed. It can’t by any human standards; by all human standards this dynasty would have torn itself apart in the bickering, in the licentiousness, in the violence of this family. The family would have decayed had it not been for the sustaining restraining sovereign grace of God.

[5, “Then King David sent, and fetched him out of the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, from Lord Jesus Christ-debar. [6] Now when Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, was come unto David, he fell on his face, and did obeisance. And David said, Mephibosheth. And he answered, Behold thy servant! [7] And David said unto him, Fear not; for I will surely show thee kindness for Jonathan, thy father’s sake, and will restore thee all the land of Saul, thy father; and thou shalt eat at my table continually. [8] And he bowed himself, and said, What is thy servant, that thou should look upon such a dead dog as I am? [9] Then the king called to Ziba, Saul’s servant, and said unto him, I have given unto thy master’s son all that pertained to Saul and to all his house. [10] Thou, therefore, and thy sons, and thy servants, shall till the land for him, and thou shall bring in the fruits, that thy master’s son may have food to ear; but Mephibosheth, thy master’s son, shall eat always at my table. Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants. [11] Then said Ziba unto the king, According to all that my lord, the king, hath commanded his servant, so shall thy servant do. As for Mephibosheth, said the king, he shall eat at my table, as one of the king’s sons. [12] And Mephibosheth had a young son, whose name was Micha. And all who dwelt in the house of Ziba were servants unto Mephibosheth. [13] So Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem; for he did eat continually at the king’s table. And he was lame on both his feet.”]

So here we have a picture, David acting toward Mephibosheth as the Lord is about to act toward David. And the rest of chapter depicts it. Verse 7, he takes Mephibosheth to the table. Now David also was very wise, he wasn’t just being gracious because keeping Mephibosheth in Jerusalem, out from his own property, he was able to keep eyes on him, he was able to control him, so it wasn’t just an act of charity, it was an act of fine political wisdom for David to keep Mephibosheth in this position. The man is safe, he is lame, he is crippled, he’s helpless. He’s saved by an agreement that David has made, David’s word.

All right, that’s David, the last time he functions. Now let’s start with chapter 11:1. this is one of those passages that people wish it wasn’t in the Scripture, for many reasons. You always like to see a hero come out good at the end; it’s very disheartening to see a man given all the things that David was given, blow it. It’s not a very pleasant story and we don’t like this kind of story, but God, in His wisdom, insists we read this kind of story because this story describes us. Now when we see David fall apart and collapse, notice God sustains him. He disciplines him but He sustains him because God has made a sovereign promise to sustain him. So similarly when you fall apart, God has made a promise to sustain us, and since God has made a promise to sustain us, then God will sustain us over each of these kinds of difficulty.

2 Samuel 11:1, it’s a continuation of the campaign that was being waged on the east side of Jordan. There was a power block up near the Euphrates valley that was being dealt with and to the south we had the Syrians, not the Assyrians, but the Syrians or the Arameans, as their correct name is, and then south of them we have the people of Ammon. By the way, the descendants are the Jordanians today and their capital is Amman, the same city that we’re reading about here. And in 10:14 you note that “Joab returned from the children of Ammon,” in other words, it was approaching the rainy season, these people had walled themselves up in the city, and so he withdrew his armies back to safe ground on the west side of Jordan.

Now the spring rains are finished and they want to go out and finish this job; they’ve got to wipe out Ammon. Why? Because this secures their eastern flank and unless the eastern flank is secure they’ll be open to invasion. So they must do this and we have a statement that summarizes this: “And it came to pass, after the year was ended, at the time when kings go forth to battle,” that’s the spring, “that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel, and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah.” In other words, what follows now happens during the siege of Rabbah. And the note is left, “But David tarried still at Jerusalem.”

Now if you turn to 1 Chronicles 20, the parallel text; remember Chronicles parallels 2 Samuel at this point, to show you the difference in perspective of the two books, the author of 1 Chronicles, in his first verse of chapter 20 picks up where Samuel leaves off, and continues the story. “And it came to pass that, after the year was ended, at the time that kings go out to battle, Joab led forth the power of the army, and wasted the country of the children of Ammon, and came and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried at Jerusalem,” period. Now all of 2 Samuel 11-12 takes place between the period at the sentence of “David tarried at Jerusalem” and the beginning of the next sentence of verse 1, “And Joab smote Rabbah, and destroyed it. So 2 Samuel chapters 11 and 12 take place between those two sentences.

Now this raises a question, why is it that the author of Chronicles didn’t see fit to let us in on all that’s happened. Obviously for a different reason. He was writing by inspiration of the Holy Spirit from the standpoint of what was happening internally inside David’s court. So everything in Samuel centered on the court life. Chronicles centers on the external flow of history. So we have at this point a divergence between the two books; though they parallel in time they diverge radically in author’s viewpoint and purpose.

Now what are we to make of this last statement, “David tarried still at Jerusalem.” The word “tarry” or stay is a Hebrew participle, it is a circumstantial clause which means that while the siege is going on at Rabbah, David constantly remains at Jerusalem. It’s of note, where is David usually when there’s a war? He’s right in it; something abnormal has happened. And here we get perspective on how sin operates, and there are a lot of things here on how sin operates and some very vital principles, and if you pay attention and master these principles they’ll save you from a lot of grief in life.

David, first of all, has failed the prosperity test. God can test believers two ways; He can test believers by adversity or He can test us by prosperity. David has been tested by prosperity, and by the way, if you have to choose between being tested by prosperity and tested by adversity, don’t be so sure that the prosperity test is easier. It sounds easier, but yet if you read the recorded history in Scripture, you’ll see over and over again, more people fall apart under the test of prosperity than the test of adversity, and David, the greatest believer of all time falls under the prosperity test. God has graced David with everything, literally. God has graced him with a kingdom; God has graced him with an army that is victorious in the field. God has graced him with a family, by this time David has many sons. God has graced him and graced him and graced him but David’s attitude, indicated by his overt action of staying in Jerusalem means by this point he is no longer thankful for what God is doing to him.

What is God doing? What is the siege of Rabbah that’s going on? Isn’t that part of the expansion of David’s kingdom? Shouldn’t David be vitally concerned with the expansion of his kingdom? Shouldn’t he be in the forefront of battle? Of course, if he cares for what God is doing in his life. But at this point this statement is an observation that every one saw in the court, something has happened to David, he’s no longer got the zeal, the zest, there’s been a change in his life for the worst. He is not excited about doing God’s Word any more, or following the Word, He is not excited about God’s plan for his life any more. So what about this.

Let’s look at the mechanics; turn back to Genesis 4 to the crouching passage because this explains what’s happening in David’s soul. Understand this and you’ll understand things that you’ll do someday, hopefully you won’t but someday it may happen, you’ll understand why other people do crazy things. Here is the human soul and since the fall everyone of us has soul damage. We have problems with our bodies, dying flesh, our body and it’s influence on the emotions, our body has extensive damage from the fall, every person. This means that every person’s soul is under bondage. The emotion and the mind are affected. The human spirit is also affected, total depravity. The human spirit, instead of listening to the conscience, always wants to go contrary, it is a rebellious spirit and this factor operates on the mind and on the emotions. So the mind and the emotions faced from one side with the deterioration of the body, faced on the other side with a spirit of rebellion, are wounded to some degree in every person.

The Bible tells us more than that; the Bible also tells us that your wounds or your areas of weakness in the mind and in the emotion are peculiar to your family, so that you actually, because of your body which is inherited, you inherit weaknesses through your father and mother. And therefore you are not just a product of your own sin, your own sin, you are a product of your family’s sin. You may not like it but that’s just the name of the game. Just as you inherit various abilities, you inherit your physique, you inherit various characteristics of your body from your parents, so also you inherit various soul damages from your parents. Now in Genesis 4, Cain in verse 5 was in the mental attitude sin stage. Verse 6, “And the LORD said unto Cain, Why are you angry? And why is your countenance fallen?” So far Cain is more in the mental attitude area, he’s sitting in the mental attitude, he’s on negative volition, and it hasn’t burst forth into anything violent yet. But God gives him a warning in verse 7, and here’s the crouching principle. “If you do well,” that means if you walk in fellowship, if you adhere to the Word, then you’ll be accepted, “shall you not be accepted? But if you do not well,” that is, if you stay on negative volition, “then sin crouches [lieth] at the door.”

Now what does it mean “sin crouches at the door?” Let’s look at the soul again. Let’s take David. David grew up in a family where there was a family habit of passion in the emotions. This passion was not by itself bad. Why wasn’t it bad? For one thing, it promoted a lot of art; who wrote most of the Psalms? David. A passionate man was responsible for those pieces of literary art; a passionate man was responsible for the music that was given to Israel. David’s soul had passion in it. By itself the passion wasn’t bad. David was a very emotional person, not in the bad sense that he let his emotions spill out, but he could respond to situations in life to a greater degree than most of us can. David had a higher emotional response to life. Now while he was… see, he was in a fallen body, he’s under the curse, as all creatures are, but God is gracious and God has what we call restraining grace, so that David’s passions would be contained.

Now David could not contain his own passion, but God could through restraining grace. So David’s passions were kept in line as long as David was obedient to what he knew of the will of God. Now when David turns on negative volition, one of the results that is going to be is that God is going to remove his restraining hand of grace on passion and the sin crouches at the door. There is deep in David’s heart a vicious beast, and this is the sin nature teamed up with his passionate nature that is going to blow overboard, and we’re going to see murder, adultery and violence as a result of this. It was always there, it was always canned up in the fallen creature. It never spilled out because God’s grace kept it in. Now don’t think this is unusual of David. It’s true of you and it’s true of me. Every one of us have areas where our sin nature, if God tonight were to take His hands of restraint off you, your sin nature would come out in various gross forms and it would amplify itself into something very vicious and very ugly.

Now don’t get fatheaded, no amount of spiritual exercise is going to keep your sin nature in line. The only thing that keeps our sin natures in line is God’s hand of restraining grace; that and that alone. But if by our own volition we choose to avoid and go against God’s restraining hand of grace, then He gives us up. He gives us up to the passions that are there all the time, and David’s family pattern is going to break forth. We know it’s in the family because we’ve observed David’s behavior before. For example, turn to 2 Samuel 6:16, here’s David passionately responding to the ark. Look what he’s doing, look at the range of this man’s emotion. “As the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal, Saul’s daughter, looked out of a window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD,” obviously he’s emotionally responding to God’s presence. Is there anything wrong with that? No, because God judged Michal for laughing at it. There is nothing wrong with that because David would respond to God this way and God wanted David to respond in this way. This is how David generated all his great work in the Psalms. Read the Psalms and you see how David’s responding. So David’s response pattern itself isn’t wrong, it’s the orientation. What is it that David is responding to—whatever it is he will be a good responder. Now God in is keeping those passions oriented toward himself, up until this point. And now David has allowed weeds to grow in his life.

The very fact that he’s acting as he is in chapter 11:1, he is waiting in Jerusalem, means that for some time David has been out of fellowship. For some time David has avoided doing what he knew of the will of God, and because of this David has spent a lot of time out of fellowship. You’d better pay attention because this is how you can get in trouble fast. If you have as big a libido as David had, and you stay out of fellowship like David stayed out, it’s going to show up; it’s got to show up, it’ll always show up. That’s just the way we’re made since the fall. The only insurance policy you’ve got is to stay in fellowship. That’s the only thing that’ll get you through.

Let’s look at more of David’s changed life. Verse 2, “And it came to pass in the evening [at eventide] that David arose from his bed,” does that sound like David? Turn to Psalm 5:3, what’s David doing here, it’s a basic Davidic Psalm, it says so in the title. David gives his praise, he says “My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning, O LORD, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and I will look up.” In Psalm 59:16, another Davidic Psalm. What is David’s lifestyle here? “I will sing of Thy power, I will sing aloud of Thy mercy in the morning.” So David is obviously an early riser. Psalm 143:8, another Davidic Psalm speaks of the same habit in his life. “Cause me to hear Thy loving-kindness in the morning, for in Thee do I trust.” So David has a pattern to his life that he is an early riser.

So now we notice two things about David; one, his negative volition is showing up in the fact he has forsaken his responsibility as the commander in chief. He’s sitting at home, and he’s going to get chewed out for it later on by Uriah. He takes care of Uriah. Negative volition shows up again, he is now a late riser. These things are not to be dismissed and just laughed at and we move on because right here we have a very vital principle. When God’s restraining hand of grace begins to back off and we begin to suffer under category 2 type suffering, rebellion, you begin to develop -R learned behavior patterns, which Dr. Jay Adams has called life dominating patterns. That is, the same pattern shows up in 25 different areas of your life. David is unthankful in every single area. He’s unthankful as far as God’s campaign that He’s working right before his eyes, he could care less. He’s no longer thankful because of those times that he had in the morning alone with the Lord in prayer and reading the Word, he could care less. In other words, he’s got a lifestyle that has tubed him out in every single area. And it’s showing up in overt action.

What does he do? Verse 2, “David arose from his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house.” Now I’m going to go through and exegete the text then I’m going to come back and develop certain principles. Now you’d better tighten your seat belt because this is one of these very explicit passages of Scripture and again I preface my remarks, I didn’t write it, to don’t blame me for X-rated material. God the Holy Spirit wrote it and it’s for our edification. And it gets very open and quite frank here, and all I can say is just be prepared and stick with it and relax.

Verse 2, “David arose from his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house.” The word “walked” means walk about, he’s pacing; obviously this indicates that he’s worrying, so right here he’s in mental attitude sin, walking around and around and around and around his house. I want you to see the prelude, it wasn’t that he just hopped in the sack with Bathsheba. There were months that preceded this of life-changing styles, and conversely, the way of dealing with this kind of a problem takes months of life-changing styles the other way before you can be strong enough to meet these kinds of situations. So David “walked about on the roof of the king’s palace.” It puts the king’s palace there because there’s going to be a point made of the story as we summarize it. “And from the roof he saw a woman washing herself, and the woman was very beautiful to look upon.” The word “washing” is a participle, it means she’s standing there watching her doing it. She’s washing herself on the roof and she is extremely beautiful because in the Hebrew it says she has a very, very voluptuous figure. So David stops walking and he starts looking. And he likes this show and so he just sits there and watches for a while.

Verse 3, “And David sent,” and this also is a verb to notice because this lets you in on the fact that the servants of the court are in on all these escapades that go on. People have said well how did the writer know what happened in these intimate moments. The servants, look who he’s sending; David doesn’t go to Bathsheba personally, he sends an intermediary. Do you think these servants were any better at stopping gossip than we are? No, there’s gossip all over David’s court about this thing. So obviously many people knew what was going on. “And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah, the Hittite?” Now it’s no accident those two names are there, because if you hold the place these two names show up some place else.

Turn to 2 Samuel 23, of all places, we meet the same two names in David’s honor roll for his army. These are the distinguished officers of the army of the Israelites. In other words, this woman is related, she’s the daughter of one of David’s army buddies, and she is the wife of one of David’s army buddies. Verse 34b, “Eliam,” is listed as one of David’s top commanders, an outstanding soldier. In verse 39 you have “Uriah, the Hittite,” another one of David’s top commanders. So this particular woman is directly involved, not just the wife of some enlisted man, she is the wife of a prominent officer in David’s army and the daughter of another prominent officer in David’s army. She was part of the high society. David probably knows her.

Verse 4, “And David sent messengers, and took her. And she came in unto him,” this is no word that this woman ever protested at any point. “And she came in unto him, and he lay with her,” now the next sentence is all screwed up, and the next sentence is the key to the whole passage, so let’s take it slow. It says in the King James, “for she was purified from her uncleanness. And she returned unto her house.” That’s not what the text says at all. It’s a circumstantial clause, the narrative goes on and stops for these circumstantial clauses; the circumstantial clauses are injected in Hebrew narrative to fill you in on what’s happening. So you have narrative, narrative, narrative, narrative, stop, description of what’s going on, then narrative, narrative, narrative, stop and we’ll get to another thing. Well, here is one of those pauses in the narrative to describe something about Bathsheba. “She was purifying,” participle, “she was purifying herself from uncleanness.”

Let’s turn back to Leviticus 15:19 to find out what’s going on. In Leviticus 15:19 under the Law of the Old Testament a woman who was in menstruation must abstain from sex for seven days, or according to this passage of Scripture, until the menstruation stopped if it lasted longer than seven days. [“And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days; and whosoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening.” Now along with this there are a series of commands to the husband. In Leviticus 18:19 the command to the husband is, “You shall not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness, as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness.” No sex was allowed during the menstruation period, for seven days. In 20:18 there’s even a stronger command about this, “And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness, he has discovered her fountain, and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people.” And an even stronger passage, Ezekiel 18:5-6, notice the qualifications of a just man. “But if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right, [6] And has not eaten upon the mountains, neither has lifted up his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, neither has defiled his neighbor’s wife, neither has come near to a menstruous woman,…” so it’s very clear that under the Old Testament menstruation was a time when the woman was considered ceremonially unclean, and therefore, during this period no sex was allowed.

Now this had the effect of doing something very interesting. It had the effect of starting sex at the time when the women were most fertile. And if the Old Testament commands are carried out logically, then most of the sex activity of the male would be directed to his wife at the exact time of her fertility. Why is this? Because God was telling them to multiply, to be fruitful. It was not something spiritual, it means multiply; the rabbits in Australia multiply and so do Jews. So therefore these laws were given to promote that activity.

Now let’s see how it looks in Bathsheba’s case. She had gone through seven days; at the end of those seven days, she, it says in verse 4, was purifying herself. That is, the next couple of days was spent washing and so on, and that was a time when she would wash herself and then she would become clean again. It so happens, biologically, that a woman is fertile after about four or five more days; this is when the ovum is released. So therefore, the fertility period is very close; in Bathsheba’s case she must have had a short menstrual period of something and her ovaries released the ovum and she was very fertile at this time. And that’s why in verse 4 there’s this notice that she was purifying herself. It has the hint, if you take it against all these verses that I’ve shown you, that what David was doing is that he was essentially disregarding the Law, he was not giving her time to become purified, because it is a participle, she wasn’t yet purified. She was in the process of being purified and David just barged right in. Which is an element to underscore the fact that David at this time could have cared less about anything related to the Word of God. Even in his sexual treatment of Bathsheba it was not in line with the Law. And David obviously got it because in verse 5, “And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am with child.”

Now later on we’re going to deal with the rest of this chapter but I want to summarize under five points the David and Bathsheba incident and try to pull this together. There’s a lot of stuff in here and the only way I can do it is to pull it together by points.

First point: David had been spiritually out of it for some time, probably months before this incident. He was out of it long enough to establish life dominating patterns of rebellion against God, patterns that controlled the time he woke up, patterns that controlled where he was going to spend his time during the day. All the self-discipline had been lost; David’s life was changed. So the Bathsheba incident had a long, long prelude. And you can apply that in your life, nobody gets into trouble out of nothing. Every person that gets involved in these kinds of things has had a long pattern of behavior.

Second point: David’s passions, which were his native family passions, we’re going to see this, his sons have the same problem, they’re just a highly sexed family, that’s all and one of the problems they had was a libido problem. David’s passions were not being held in check by God’s restraining grace. In other words, they had been for a while during his life but by this time, because of negative volition, David came under category two suffering and was now unable to check his own passions.

Third point: David’s best woman was not Bathsheba, it was Abigail. Why? In 1 Samuel 25 Abigail is pictured as the ideal woman for David. Why is she an ideal woman for David? What did she do for David? She was a woman who knew the Word and could tell David he was out of it without bossing him. Now for any woman to tell her husband that he is wrong, and yet at the same time not do it so she’s bossing him, that takes fantastic wisdom. And Abigail pulled one of the greatest things that any woman can ever pull off in 1 Samuel 25, which rates her in my book as one of the all-time women filled with chokmah; she had a tremendous ability to handle David. So Abigail was exactly what David needed. When David’s passions got out of line, it would take an Abigail to get them back; she could be his ‘etzer, she could be the one that would keep David towing the line with the Word of God. Abigail had character. Now David had six other women including Michal, Saul’s daughter, which much of an inspiration, but he had those two, so you can’t argue that David didn’t have variety. We find Abigail was his best woman because she could compliment his passions with the Word of God.

Now we come to Bathsheba, the fourth point about Bathsheba: Bathsheba was a passive woman and quite stupid. She was very beautiful but spiritually she was pretty stupid. I’ll show you where she was stupid. Every place she shows up in Scripture she’s being used by a man. Every time! This woman has no assertion of her own; she has not, apparently, strengthened her human spirit where when she has standards she’s going to live by those standards. Bathsheba is always being led around by the nose. Now that is false submission. If you want a proper concept of what a submissive woman is in Scripture, Proverbs 31. A woman can be submissive and still active. A woman can be submissive properly to her husband and not buy everything he does. A woman can be submissive Scripturally and God honoring by her insistence on adhering to the standards of the Word of God. Abigail is such a woman; Bathsheba was not. She occurs, obviously in 2 Samuel 11 and she’s being used by David to gratify his sex desires.

Now turn to 1 Kings 1 she shows up again, and let’s watch how Bathsheba shows up here, in what kind of light. This is one of those great character studies in the Bible and you’ll learn,… one of the greatest things you can acquire is the ability to read character and not just judge a book by its cover. Bathsheba has a nice cover but there isn’t much on the pages inside. Verse 11, “Where Nathan spoke unto Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon,” now here is a woman who’s grown up in the court, who has been exposed for years to the intrigues of the court. Her husband is dying, as a senile old man, Bathsheba sits around and she sees Adonijah take over, and she lets him, she doesn’t raise a hand, she doesn’t say anything, so Nathan comes to Bathsheba and, “saying, Has thou not heard that Adonijah, the son of Haggith, doth reign, and David, our Lord knows it not?” Haven’t you told your husband about this?

Verse 12, “Now, therefore, come, let me, I pray thee, give thee counsel, that you may save thine own life, and the life of your son Solomon.” It’s gotten so desperate, she has done nothing except watch the situation deteriorate, hasn’t even told David about it, doesn’t apparently even realize that her own life is in danger, Nathan has to come tell her. When he says let me “give counsel, that you may save your own life,” verse 13, “Go and get thee in unto King David, and say unto him,” and this tells us something about Bathsheba, she didn’t know how to handle her husband. Never did learn; this is in the closing days of their marriage, it’s about to be terminated by death and she still can’t handle David. She’s got to be told how to do it? How does that compare with Abigail; Abigail didn’t even know David and she knew how to handle him. See that’s the difference; that’s how David should have realize that Abigail was his best woman, because she knew him, she knew how to handle him. Bathsheba is beautiful but stupid. She just doesn’t get with it, she doesn’t realize what she’s doing, she can’t handle her husband. She doesn’t know what to do, she falls apart in this kind of a situation.

Another place she occurs, 1 Kings 2:12, “Then sat Solomon upon the throne of David, his father, and his kingdom was established greatly.” Solomon is sitting on the throne, this is after the Adonijah incident and she blows it again. Verse 13, “And Adonijah, the son of Haggith, came to Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon. And she said, Do you come peaceably? And he said, Peaceably.” That shows you she’s gullible because the next thing he’s going to do is to propose treason and this woman doesn’t even see it. [14] “He said, moreover, I have somewhat to say unto you. And she said, Say on. [15] And he said, You know that the kingdom was mine, and that all Israel set their faces on me, that I should reign; howbeit, the kingdom is turned about, and is become my brother’s’ for it was his from the LORD. [16] And now I ask one petition of thee, deny me not. And she said unto him, Say on. [17] And he said, Speak, I pray thee, unto Solomon, the king, for he will not refuse thee, that he give me Abishag, the Shunammite, to wife [in marriage.]” Now in the Ancient East that is tantamount to treason. See what he’s asking for? A harem.

This is just a clever gimmick on Adonijah’s part to get the throne back. And Bathsheba was just buys the line like a gullible girl and walks on. Verse 19, “Bathsheba, therefore, went unto King Solomon, to speak unto him for Adonijah. And the king rose up to meet her,” and it goes through this, and then she said in verse 21 what this boy told her to say to her son. Verse 22, “And King Solomon answered,” and Solomon saw through it right away, he said to his mother, “And why do you ask Abishag, the Shunammite for Adonijah? Ask for him the kingdom also; for he is my elder brother, even form him, and for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab, the son of Zeruiah. Verse 23, “Then King Solomon swore by the LORD, saying, God do so to me, and more also, if Adonijah has not spoken this word against his own life.” So she wound up getting Adonijah’s funeral instead of his marriage. In other words, this woman is never pictured as an alert woman, anywhere you read it in Scripture. She’s always out of it, always slow, doesn’t understand, walking around in a fog.

Now the fifth point: gets back to 2 Samuel. You might guess this from everything we’ve said: Bathsheba was one of the most foolish women sexually that ever walked the face of this earth. The washing that she is doing on the roof isn’t just taking a shower, she is washing her genitals. Now is that the kind of thing you do in public, so the king can peek and watch? We can only come to one of two conclusions, either this woman is deliberately seducing the king, or she is one of the all-time ignoramuses. There is no other conclusion possible for this kind of behavior. That’s what the washing is. I told you there’s be something in there you didn’t see in the English. Now that’s not what you do in public. But obviously any woman that would do this kind of thing on a roof, right next to the palace, and not only David can see anybody in the palace can see, look down there and say my, how about it. And she just goes on doing it. In other words, she got what comes to her. And later on we’re going to see David very foolishly fell in line with this. But I want you to notice these five points, David fell for this kind of thing and for this idiot because he was personally out of it. He’s held responsible, the Word of God does not condemn Bathsheba; the author of Scripture is gentle here, he just simply describes it and he lets us draw our own conclusions. The woman was very, very foolish, she was not David’s best woman.

But here’s the clinker to it all. She becomes the mother of the Messianic line, Bathsheba, and that’s the sixth point. She, not Abigail by God’s grace winds up as the mother of the Messianic seed. Now if you haven’t seen grace yet, after this you ought to be able to see it; a woman this stupid, this out of it, is honored by being named as one of the four women of history in the line of Jesus Christ. How did she ever get there? God only knows.

With our heads bowed