Lent 2025 Day 12: Tue 18 Mar
2 Samuel 11:1-12
11 In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
2 One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman washing. The woman was very beautiful, 3 and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, ‘She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.’ 4 Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. 5 The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, ‘I am pregnant.’
6 So David sent this word to Joab: ‘Send me Uriah the Hittite.’ And Joab sent him to David. 7 When Uriah came to him, David asked him how Joab was, how the soldiers were and how the war was going. 8 Then David said to Uriah, ‘Go down to your house and wash your feet.’ So Uriah left the palace, and a gift from the king was sent after him. 9 But Uriah slept at the entrance to the palace with all his master’s servants and did not go down to his house.
10 David was told, ‘Uriah did not go home.’ So he asked Uriah, ‘Haven’t you just come from a military campaign? Why didn’t you go home?’
11 Uriah said to David, ‘The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my commander Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and make love to my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!’
12 Then David said to him, ‘Stay here one more day, and tomorrow I will send you back.’ So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next.
King David, that young boy slayer of Goliath and scourge of the uncircumcised, has grown into a man. His eyes linger on the beautiful woman washing. She may not have been revealing her nakedness, but David was still spying on her privacy. He decides that he wants her, even though she is ritually unclean, and beckons her to his palace and thence his bed.
David has taken what is not his. He has betrayed the trust of his faithful soldier Uriah. And now David has to make a plan to cover his sin – he’d get Uriah back from fighting and give him a little time off in the hope he’d spend time at home with his wife, hoping that Uriah would make love to her so that the child she’d already conceived would pass as his.
Uriah would not play ball, and he refused to visit his wife while his own fellow-soldiers were sleeping rough. This complete adherence to his commission makes Uriah a faithful superhero. And how was this hero rewarded by his lord and king? More tomorrow.
I leave you with a 16th century depiction that all but abandons the Biblical account.
Did Bathsheba bear any blame?
Father, I hide things from you, yet you see them plainly. I try to cover up my wrongdoing, but your desire is to forgive a repentant sinner. I hurt others as I attempt to look blameless, and you grieve for them. I acknowledge my foolishness before you. Amen.
41:10 Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen (Arie)
20. Aria T (Chorus I) and Chorus II
I will watch with my Jesus,
– So our sins fall asleep. –
My death is atoned for by his soul's anguish;
his sorrow makes me full of joy.
– Therefore his deserved suffering
must be truly bitter and yet sweet to us. –
21. Evangelist And went away a bit, fell down on his face and prayed and said:
Jesus My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will it, rather as you wish.
Ends at 46:58
Paul