David’s Sin and His Last Years

At this time he sinfully lay with Bathsheba, a woman of remarkable beauty. She is said to have been the wife of a man named Uriah, who was then away in the camp. David had him killed by exposing him to the enemy at a dangerous place in the battle. In this way he added to his wives this woman, now free from the bond of marriage, but already pregnant through adultery. Then David was sharply rebuked by Nathan the prophet. Although he confessed his sin, he did not escape God’s punishment. Within a few days he lost the son born of that secret union, and many terrible things happened to his house and family. [a]

At last his son Absalom wickedly took up arms against his father, wanting to drive him from the throne. Joab met him on the field of battle. The king had begged him to spare the young man once he was beaten, but Joab ignored this command and put him to the sword for his attempt on his father’s life. That victory is said to have been a sorrowful one for the king, so great was his fatherly love that he wished even the son who had tried to kill his father to be forgiven. This war seemed hardly over when another broke out under a general named Sheba, who had stirred up all the wicked to take up arms. But the whole uprising was quickly put down by the death of its leader. David then fought several battles against the Philistines with good success. With all his enemies subdued by war, and the troubles abroad and at home settled, he enjoyed in peace a most flourishing kingdom.

Then he was suddenly seized with a desire to count the people, in order to find out the strength of his empire. So Joab, the commander of the army, counted them, and they were found to number one million three hundred thousand citizens. David soon regretted it and repented, and begged God’s pardon for having set his mind on reckoning the power of his kingdom by the number of his subjects rather than by the favor of God. So an angel was sent to him to make known a threefold punishment and to let him choose one or another of them. He was offered three years of famine, three months of flight before his enemies, or three days of plague. Avoiding both flight and famine, he chose the plague, and almost in a moment seventy thousand men died. Then David, seeing the angel by whose right hand the people were being struck down, begged for pardon. He offered himself alone to be punished in place of them all, saying that he deserved destruction, since he was the one who had sinned. So the punishment of the people was turned aside, and David built an altar to God on the spot where he had seen the angel.

After this, grown weak with age and illness, he appointed as his successor in the kingdom Solomon, who had been born to him by Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. Solomon was anointed with the royal oil by Zadok the priest and received the title of king while his father was still alive. David died after reigning forty years.