Unjust and wrong
2 Samuel Chapters 10 – 11
We can get literary whiplash making the jump from yesterday’s reading to today’s. Yesterday we read of an idyllic time when justice ruled and David could do no wrong to today reading of the darkest point in David’s life where he descends into both adultery and murder.
But first we see a war between the Ammonites and David’s men begin with a tragic misunderstanding.
David sincerely wants to send sympathy to the new Ammonite king on the death of his father. The new king, in a paranoid reaction worthy of Saul himself, assumes the delegation to be spies preparing for assault and has them seized and humiliated by having their beards shaved off and their clothing cut short.
David responds decisively and Israel prevails over the Ammonites, but the fighting continues.
As it continues, spring arrives and Joab takes the army out to fight.
Chapter 11 begins with one of my favorite lines of scripture from a purely literary standpoint: “In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the kings men….But David remained in Jerusalem.”
In three elegant but damning sentences the writer exposes David’s first failure that leads to the whole sordid incident: he wasn’t doing what a king was supposed to be doing.
It was the season for kings to be going to war, not the season to be lounging back at the palace while others fought his battles for him.
But because he is in the wrong place at the wrong time, David sees the lovely Bathsheba bathing and lusts after her. He has her brought to him, sleeps with her a conceives a child.
David then tries to conceal his wrongdoing by bringing her husband—one of his faithful fighting men—back from the front lines in hopes he will sleep with his wife and be the presumed father of the child. Uriah, though, is too honorable to take advantage of the situation.
David then goes from bad to worse, using Uriah to carry a message to Joab that will lead to his own death so that David can take Bathsheba as his own.