David’s predominance in the Old Testament is indisputable; as the voluminous material about him confirms this fact. But it is more than the number of pages written about David that draws readers to him, it is his humanness.[1] In David, one sees authenticity; brokenness, sin, and failure.[2] In other words, he is relatable. The Bible is honest in its portrayal of its heroes. For warriors, David’s brokenness and sin is a source of strength and hope.
Throughout the narratives of David, his brokenness is evident in his family relationships. He struggled parenting his children, demonstrated passivity at critical moments, harbored bitterness and refused to forgive (2 Sam 13:1-21, 14:28-31). Marital tension is a common theme in his life as well (2 Sam 6:16-23, 20:3).[3] At times, David deceived, manipulated, and was compromised by his political motivation (1 Sam 27:10: 2 Sam 11-12, 18:3, 20:16, 23:18).[4]
As a warrior, David knew his moral boundaries and still transgressed them. He disparaged the dead, lashed out in violence, and teetered on taking life for no just cause (1 Sam 17:51, 25:1-44; 2 Sam 4:9-12). Vengeance and resentment lived in his soul. His dying wish was for violence to be exacted on two men, one whom David allegedly forgave and assured freedom from harm (1 Kgs 2:5-9).[5]
The preeminent story of David’s fallenness is a combat story (2 Sam 11-12). It entails a deployed warrior—one of David’s loyal mighty men—and his deployed spouse (2 Sam 23:39). It centers on a warrior-king who was supposed to be at war alongside his men. Like Adam and Eve before him, David saw something that was not his and took it by force.[6] David the warrior despised his God and rejected His given word in this moment.
The gravity of this act is heightened by grasping that this is the commander of the entire Israelite army. This is the four-star general taking the wife of the enlisted special operator and doing so while this warrior is out risking his life.[7] Called home by the commander, Uriah became victim to David’s deceit and attempts at covering his tracks. Uriah’s honor circumvented every treacherous move of David. Increasingly desperate, the warrior-king plunged his sword deeper into his own conscience as he penned the order for Uriah’s life to be taken.
It was David’s hand that ended Uriah.[8] Fratricide is horrific and damaging enough for all involved; this, however, was a case of first-degree murder. David’s violent betrayal rippled out into his troops who obeyed his orders, exposing them to moral injury. His callous response to the execution of his order matched the condition of his heart.[9] He showed no remorse. Without hesitation, he descended further as he wed a grieving spouse.
The Bible is unflinching in its portrayal of David’s sin, as he is the pinnacle of a uniform-wearing dirt-bag. He manipulates, deceives, betrays, and kills the men who loyally obey him. He forcefully violates the vulnerable deployed spouse and robs her of the life for which she sacrifices.[10] He abuses his authority.[11] He breaks trust with his army and his nation. His action in today’s military would have him stripped of his uniform and sentenced to prison.
It must be emphasized that the fall of David starts with a sin against his vocation.[12] He should have been shoulder to shoulder with Uriah. He should have been wearing his uniform, not sitting on his roof. This fatal move has a domino effect. The narrative unfolds the movement described by one New Testament author: “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:14-15). David’s action forever changed his life.[13]
This section started with the assertion that David’s brokenness brings hope to the warrior. How can that be? An honest look in the mirror requires embracing the fact that David’s actions are not beyond any of us. If warriors cannot see themselves in David and David in themselves, then they do not know themselves.[14] The raw portrayal of David communicates that a man of God and a man of war is also a broken, frail, struggling human being. This painful reality is also a hope-filled one.
David is not left hopeless in his hopelessness. The narrative reveals a gracious God that pursues this warrior with discipline and mercy. God sent a prophet to confront David, conveying that He had not left this man of God to his own devices. When the gravity of his actions landed on him, David owned it.[15] He made no excuse, but confessed: “I have sinned.” His three-word confession expands when he picks up the pen to write one of the greatest psalms.
Psalm 51 is a penitent’s guide for the morally compromised warrior.[16] This psalm catalogues David’s ownership over the external and internal, vertical and horizontal, individual and communal, dimensions of his transgressions.[17] His confession is relentless and thorough as he links his conception in sin to the Bathsheba debacle and refuses to shift blame for his actions. His petitions are bold and unwavering as he asks for mercy, forgiveness, restoration, cleansing, a clean heart, a right spirit, the presence of God, joy, and an open mouth to praise. His trust in God’s covenant loyalty is unshakable as he leans into the mercy of God, the saving passion of the Lord, and the posture of Yahweh toward contrition.[18]
How does God respond to David’s extreme ownership? Through the mouth of Nathan, the confronting prophet, he speaks: “The Lord also has put away your sin, you shall not die” (2 Sam 12:13). Total forgiveness is God’s gracious response to his layered sin. Warriors may ask: Can God ever forgive me for the heinous things I have seen, done, or failed to do?[19] David’s story gives the answer. The answer is hope for the warrior.
David, like Paul, sees himself as the chief of sinners. He recognizes that even his moral failure is useful for pointing others to the mercy of God. Paul’s language could just as well be David’s: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Tim 1:15-16). This is pure hope for the warfighter.[20]
[1]Brueggemann recognizes David as a “paradigm for humanness.” He further asserts, “What is it that makes David so endlessly fascinating to us? I propose to think this way. On the one hand, David is much like us. There is something genuinely human about him, which means that there is a shape to his life that we can count on and identify with. There is also a freedom about him that makes him interesting and not boring… the narrator cuts through all the royal business to see the man, to see him as an ambiguous, contradictory, enmeshed man, driven and inept, with a range of emotional possibilities… David is not ‘cleaned up’ in the sense that he is innocent, respectable, or puritanical.” We connect with this reality because it is true for us as well; “the truth about ourselves and all of life is finally polyvalent, multi-faceted, and layered. How odd it is that the biblical text knows this best!” Walter Brueggemann, David’s Truth: In Israel’s Imagination and Memory (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 6, 10, 36, 38, 114.
[2]“The Bible never denies or downplays David’s humanity…He is pious and faithful at times but is also capable of heinous crimes. He is a powerful and decisive man, except around his children whom he cannot control.” He concludes that his honest portrayal of David’s humanity is compelling to us: “Truth be told, these faults of David’s attract our attention more than his virtues. We admire the fearless and pious young hero, but we cannot identify with him. The adulterer who gets caught in a cover-up, on the other hand, is one of us. We empathize with the father who is a failure with his own children.” Steven L. McKenzie, King David: A Biography (Oxford: University Press, 2000), 2, 154, 189.
[3]1 Chronicles 3:1-8 indicates that David had seven wives. With his wives he had a total of twenty children, nineteen sons and one daughter. Berković traces God’s monogamous design in Scripture and discusses the inevitable dysfunction of polygamous relationships. Danijel Berković, “Marriage and Marital Disputes in the Old Testament,” Kairos: Evangelical Journal of Theology 12, no. 2 (2018): 177-180.
[4]“He was loyal to his friends, but ruthless to his foes. He was a liar, deceiver, and traitor.” J.M.P. Smith, “The Character of King David,” Journal of Biblical Literature 52, no. 1 (1993): 11.
[5]In the end David is weak and vengeful. “On the literary level and perhaps also on the historical level, in the end the powerful King David became an impotent victim—flaccid, senile, and a tool for his replacement.” McKenzie, “Who Was King David?” 364. See also, Greg Goswell, “King and Cultus: The Image of David in the Book of Kings,” Journal for the Evangelical Study of the Old Testament 5, no. 2 (2017): 169.
[6]Scholars have long noted thematic links between the fall of Adam and Eve and the fall of David. Particular links identified have been the progression of temptation to sin, the subtlety of sin, beauty and wisdom, despising God’s word, creating one’s own definition of good and evil, covering up sin, judgment and the movement from life under blessing and life under curse. The semantic linkages include these: saw (ra’ah), good (tôbat), take (läqach) (Gen 3:20; 2 Sam 11:2; Gen 3:6; 2 Sam 11:4). Phillip G. Camp, “David’s Fall: Reading 2 Samuel 11-14 in Light of Genesis 2-4,” Restoration Quarterly 53, no. 3 (2011): 150-158. James Ackerman traces this Genesis 2-3 theme through the narrative of David’s life. James S. Ackerman, “Knowing Good and Evil: A Literary Analysis of the Court History in 2 Samuel 9-20 and 1 Kings 1-2,” Journal of Biblical Literature 109, no. 1 (1990): 41-64.
[7]David is not ignorant about the woman he pursues. He first inquires as to her identity (2 Sam 11:3). The narrative retelling of the information he finds out is damning. Brueggemann states, “Her name is dangerously hyphenated: ‘Bathsheba—daughter of Eliam, wife of Uriah the Hittite.’ She has no existence of her own but is identified by the men to whom she belongs.” Further Brueggemann states, “Uriah will not sleep with his wife while the war continues. How different David, who sleeps with the wife of another man while that man is risking his life for David in a war that was David’s war.” Brueggemann, Interpretation: 1-2 Samuel, 273, 275.
[8]Nathan’s condemnation of David’s action in 2 Sam 12:9 is broken into five categories: 1) you have despised the word of the Lord; 2) you have done what is evil in God’s sight; 3) you have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword; 4) you have taken his wife to be your wife; and 5) you have killed Uriah with the sword of the Ammonites. Of note is the double reference to taking Uriah’s life. In the first instance it is David holding the sword. In the second, it is David putting the sword into the hand of his enemies to take the life of Uriah. The wickedness of the act is elevated by the unspoken partnership David made with the Ammonites to take Uriah out.
[9]“Do not let this matter displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another” (2 Sam 11:25) is David’s response. “David’s cynicism reaches its culmination here, even as the story reaches its culmination. In his fear and anxiety, David has set himself against the whole moral tradition of his people.” Brueggemann, Interpretation: 1-2 Samuel, 278-279.
[10]David definitely used positional force, whether physical force was included is not clear in the text. “On whether David raped Bathsheba or not, we first note that David’s lordship of the sexual encounter, which hinges on the power difference between him and Bathsheba, creates an opening for a subtle (non-physical) use of coercion by David, but to conclude that he ‘raped’ Bathsheba (in the Hebrew biblical understanding of ‘rape’) would be to push the evidence too far and read too much of our contemporary conception of rape into the biblical text.” Alexander Izuchukwu Abasili, “Was it Rape? The David and Bathsheba Pericope Re-examined,” Vetus Testamentum 61 (2011): 14.
[11]2 Sam 11-12 is a “narrative of David’s blatant abuse of power in adultery and murder.” Bernard Frank Batto, Kathryn L. Roberts, and J.J.M Roberts, David and Zion: Biblical Studies in Honor of J.J.M. Roberts (University Park: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 98.
[12]Smith rightly observes that the image of David “not accompanying all Israel to war at this time but remaining in Jerusalem may well reflect the narrator’s criticism of David as having neglected one of his traditional royal duties.” Richard G. Smith, The Fate of Justice and Righteousness During David’s Reign: Narrative Ethics and Rereading the Court History According to 2 Samuel 8:15-20:26 (New York: T&P Clark, 2009), 121.
[13]Forgiveness is immediate while the consequences for David’s actions linger. God’s discipline will never cease: “The sword shall never depart from your house” (2 Sam 12:10). Uriah is a permanent blot on David’s record (1 Kgs 15:5) and Bathsheba will forever be the wife of Uriah, not David (2 Sam 12:15; Matt 1:6). Brueggemann, Interpretation: 1-2 Samuel, 281.
[14]Brueggemann argues that if we honestly face this text we are forced to “face the harder questions of human desire and human power—desire with all its delight, power with all its potential for death…the writer has cut very, very deep into the strange web of foolishness, fear and fidelity that comprises the human map. The narrative is more than we want to know about David and more than we want to understand about ourselves.” Brueggemann, Interpretation: 1-2 Samuel, 272.
[15]“There is not much to celebrate about David in this narrative. The narrator nevertheless wants us to notice two things about this portrayal of David. First, concerning David, it is evident that David still has a considerable degree of moral courage and sensitivity. He is able to face up to his real situation. Second, concerning the gospel, though it is late in the narrative, it is not too late for David’s repentance. David is a man who is still willing and able to cast himself on Yahweh’s mercy.” Brueggemann, Interpretation: 1-2 Samuel, 282.
[16]Frederick Gaiser argues that Psalm 50 functions as a call to repentance while Psalm 51 encapsulates the way of repentance. Frederick J. Gaiser, “The David of Psalm 51: Reading Psalm 51 in Light of Psalm 50,” Word & World 23, no. 4 (2003): 382. See also, David A. Covington, “Psalm 51: Repenter’s Guide,” The Journal of Biblical Counseling 20, no.1 (2001): 21-39.
[17]“Psalm 51 looks like a ‘V,’ tracking the movement of David’s Holy-Spirit-guided look at his past, present, and future. The ‘V’ traces the descent of David’s attention, graphed as it were along a time-line from left to right. David’s prayer attention moves from the outer world of his sins downward to the inner world of his heart, then on and down to the exchange of sin for righteousness in blood sacrifice; from there on and up to David’s new heart, and then up again to the outer world of action and society.” Covington, “Psalm 51: Repenter’s Guide,” 23.
[18]“Psalm 51 (vv. 3-11) begins with an appeal to God’s mercy (or grace), merciful love (more literally, covenant loyalty or ̇esed), and abundant compassion, three attributes that are part of the foundational description of God in Exodus 34:6.” Peter Nasuti, “Repentance and Transformation: The Role of the Spirit in Psalm 51,” The Bible Today 57, no. 4 (2019): 215.
[19]In this one narrative, the sin committed and forgiven includes failing to fulfill one’s military duty, lusting after another man’s wife, researching a forbidden wife’s identity and proceeding with the sinful desire, forceful adultery with a deployed spouse, lying and manipulating to cover up the adultery, deceiving and tricking the victim’s husband, conspiring to murder a fellow-uniform wearer, pulling other soldiers into the web of deception, killing the warrior with a military order, viewing the lives of other men as collateral damage to cloaking one’s evil, taking the lives of other innocent soldiers while killing one innocent soldier, giving a soldier into the hands of the enemy to be killed, being callous and nonchalant about causing the deaths of loyal soldiers, taking the fallen soldier’s wife and marrying her, grossly misusing power and authority, rejecting and despising God’s clear word on leading and caring for warriors, betraying the biblical warrior’s code, being driven by selfishness, being controlled by pride, and rejecting God himself. David’s words are potent: “If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared” (Ps 130:3-4). A.A. Anderson, Word Biblical Commentary: 2 Samuel (Dallas: Word Books Publisher, 1989), 156.
[20]Stanley Walters explores how David’s words can and should become our words. When his confession becomes ours, so does his hope. Stanley D. Walters, “I talk of my sin (to God) (and to you): Psalm 51, with David speaking,” Calvin Theological Journal 50, no. 1 (2015): 91-109.