The Wrong the King Did

It was springtime, when kings went out with their armies. But David did not go. He sent his soldiers off to the war and stayed home in his palace in Jerusalem. And one evening, walking on the flat roof of the palace, he looked down and saw a woman, and she was very beautiful. Her name was Bathsheba, and she was another man’s wife: her husband was Uriah, a soldier — one of David’s own soldiers, away at the war, fighting for him. And David wanted her. He was the king, and there was nobody to say no to him, and he sent for her and took her. And then Bathsheba sent him a message, and it was five words long: “I am going to have a baby.”

So David tried to cover it up. He sent to the war for Uriah, and asked him friendly questions about how the fighting was going, and then said, ‘Go on home to your house tonight, and rest,’ and sent a good dinner after him — so that everybody would think the baby was Uriah’s. But Uriah would not go home. He slept in the doorway of the palace with the king’s servants. And in the morning David said to him, ‘Why did you not go home?’ And Uriah said, “The ark of God is in a tent, and Israel and Judah are living in tents, and my commander and all my lord’s men are camped out in the open field. How could I go into my own house and eat and drink and sleep in my own bed? As surely as you live, I will not do it.” There is the thing that should have stopped David cold: the foreign soldier standing in front of him was a better man than the king of Israel. But David did not stop. He kept Uriah one more day, and got him drunk to make him go home — and still he would not. And in the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, his general, and sent it to the war in Uriah’s own hand, and Uriah carried his own death sentence without knowing it. The letter said: put Uriah where the fighting is hardest, and then pull the other men back from behind him, so that he will be struck down and die. And Joab did it. And Uriah the Hittite was killed. And Bathsheba wept for her husband; and when the days of weeping were over, David sent for her and made her his wife, and she had the baby, and everybody in Jerusalem thought that was the end of it. But the thing David had done was evil in the eyes of the Lord.

So God sent a prophet named Nathan to the king. And Nathan did not begin by accusing him. He told him a story instead. He said, “There were two men in one city, one rich and one poor. The rich man had flocks and herds, very many. And the poor man had nothing at all except one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and raised, and it grew up with him and his children; it ate his own food and drank out of his own cup and slept in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man’s house. And the rich man would not touch one animal of his own to feed him. He took the poor man’s little lamb, and cooked it, and served it to his visitor.” And David went white with rage. He said, “As the Lord lives, the man who did that deserves to die! And he shall pay back that lamb seven times over — because he did such a thing, and because he had no pity.” And Nathan looked at the king and said four words: “You are the man.” And then he said the rest of it: “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I anointed you king over Israel. I rescued you out of the hand of Saul. I gave you your master’s house, and the whole house of Israel and Judah — and if that had been too little, I would have given you as much again. Why have you despised the word of the Lord and done what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife for your own. And now the sword will never leave your house.” And David did not argue, and did not make excuses, and did not have the prophet thrown out. He said five words back: “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said, “And the Lord has put your sin away. You will not die.” But being forgiven did not undo what he had done. The baby fell ill, and David lay all night on the bare ground and would not eat and begged God for the child’s life for seven days — and on the seventh day the little boy died. And David got up off the floor and washed his face and went into the house of God and worshiped, and said, ‘I shall go to him one day; he will not come back to me.’ And afterwards God gave David and Bathsheba another son, and they called him Solomon. And the Lord loved him.

And what Nathan said came true, in the saddest way: the trouble came out of David’s own house, from one of his own sons. His name was Absalom, and he was the handsomest young man in Israel, with a great head of hair, and he wanted his father’s throne. He was clever about it. He got himself a chariot and horses and fifty men to run in front of him, and every morning he stood beside the road at the city gate; and when somebody came up to the capital with a complaint to bring before the king, Absalom would catch him first and say, “Your case is a good one — but there is nobody from the king to hear you. If only somebody would make me the judge in this country! Then anybody with a complaint could come to me, and I would see him right.” And when a man went to bow to him, Absalom would catch him by the hand and pull him up and kiss him. He did that to everybody who came, for four years. And little by little he stole the hearts of the men of Israel. And then he went down to Hebron and had the trumpets blown and had himself declared king. And the message came to David: the heart of Israel has gone after Absalom.

And David — who had faced a giant with a sling — got up and ran, so that his own son would not have to fight him for the city. He went out on foot with his household and his men, and the whole country wept out loud as they went by. The priests came out carrying the ark of God to go with him, and David sent it back. He said, “Take the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor with the Lord, he will bring me back and let me see it again. And if he says he has no delight in me — here I am; let him do what seems good to him.” And there was a foreign soldier there named Ittai, who had only arrived in the country the day before, and David told him to go back and not be dragged into somebody else’s trouble. And Ittai said, “As the Lord lives, and as my lord the king lives — wherever my lord is, whether it means life or death, there your servant will be.” And David went up the hill of olive trees out of Jerusalem with his head covered and no shoes on his feet, weeping as he climbed; and all the people with him covered their heads and wept too, all the way up.

In the end the two armies met in a great forest. And before the men marched out, David stood beside the gate and gave his commanders one order, and everybody in the army heard him give it: “For my sake — deal gently with the young man Absalom.” It was a terrible battle, and David’s men won it. And Absalom, riding away on his mule, went in under the branches of a great oak — and his head caught fast in the tree, and the mule ran on out from under him, and he was left hanging there. A soldier saw him and would not touch him, because of the king’s order. But Joab the general came, and killed Absalom where he hung, and threw him into a pit in the forest and piled stones over him. And he blew the horn and called the army back, and the fighting stopped. And two runners went off to the king with the news. David was sitting between the two gates, waiting, and the watchman on the roof called down that a man was coming, running alone. ‘If he is alone,’ said the king, ‘he brings good news.’ And the first runner came up and bowed to the ground and said, “Peace! Blessed be the Lord your God, who has handed over the men who lifted their hands against my lord the king.” And the king asked the only question he cared about: “Is it well with the young man Absalom?” And the runner did not have the heart to say it, and said he had seen a crowd and did not know. And then the second runner came in, and said, ‘Good news, my lord — the Lord has given you justice today against everybody who rose up against you.’ And the king said again, “Is it well with the young man Absalom?” And the man said: may all the enemies of my lord the king end as that young man has ended.

And the king went up to the little room over the gate, and he did not care who heard him. And this is what he said as he went: “My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you — Absalom, my son, my son!” The men came home that day from a victory, and they crept into the city quietly, like an army that had lost, because the king was grieving for his son. David was a great king, and God loved him, and he wrote more than half the songs in the book of Psalms — including the one he wrote after Nathan came to him, where he says: God, make a clean heart in me. But he did a great wrong, and it cost him and it cost other people.