II Samuel 11:2-17

This has been something that I always have wondered about. "It happened one evening that David arose from his bed." What was he doing? I mean, most people go to bed at night, not evening. Was he just lounging around? Here his men were out fighting in Rabbah, taking care of business, and he was lying around on his bed in the evening time. Maybe this was late evening. Maybe he had decided to turn in early and could not sleep, so he got up, but it is just one of those little hints that tells you he was not doing anything. He was lying on his bed.

We have to know something here, however. David's counselor was Ahithophel. He was about 70 at this time, and by the way, his name means "brother of folly," but he was known as pretty much the wisest man in Israel and they said his counsel was like that of the counsel of God, the words of the Lord. So he was David's chief counselor, a man he looked up to. And Eliam, which is mentioned here in chapter 11 as Bathsheba's father, was Ahithophel's son. Eliam was one of his 30 great warriors, and he was buddies with Uriah the Hittite, who was also one of the 30 great warriors. So I suspect that that is how Uriah came to be the husband of Bathsheba, that he married his buddy Eliam's daughter.

Uriah and Bathsheba, because of her age, we would think that they had not been married long, four or five years probably at the most. They married fairly early in those days, so I would not press that too far. I would think five years at the most. So she was at her peak of beauty at this point, 20 or so when David spied her bathing on her rooftop. And her culpability in all this is fodder for another message. I do not know if I will be giving it. But we do know that in Matthew 1:6, Matthew will not even say her name. He calls her the wife of Uriah. Who did he really respect in that couple?

Perhaps the most important sentence in the whole story here in chapter 11 is the last one. "But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord." That is a classic understatement. It does not say that in Hebrew. What it says, it tells us that God was not pleased in the least. It says literally, "But the thing that David had done was evil in the eyes of the Lord." Of course!

Let us just recount the sins here, and I probably have missed a few: lust, adultery, if their coming together was consensual. If it was not, then it was rape. Deceit, a lot of deceit, malice aforethought, conspiracy with Joab and his servants, murder, and cover up. These are serious, disqualifying sins. Any one of them could disqualify him for the Kingdom of God. Is that not what Paul says in I Corinthians 6:9-10? Anyway, they are actions unworthy of a converted man, at base. And in II Corinthians 13:5-6, it tells us that we need to be careful. We go to this scripture quite a bit during these times, but just notice this and plug it into David's life at this point.