Thursday, October 30, 2025

Reading 47 | The Bible in 100 Passages

Today's Scripture
2 Samuel 11:1–15

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.” Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day, David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.

In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.” (NRSV)

Reflection

It is practically impossible to escape news of leaders abusing their positions and their power to harm people for their own gratification. Do we have to read about it in the Bible, too?

The biblical storyteller is no cynic about this. We should notice that the way the story is told betrays no accommodation to “the way things are” but retains the capacity to be shocked and grieved at an otherwise laudable leader’s moral failure. When kings conventionally go out to battle, David stays home and lounges on his couch. When he is attracted to someone else’s wife, he sends to “get” her. And when she conceives, he arranges to murder her husband.

None of this is “normal.” The consequences of David’s corruption are far-reaching and will inflict generational wounds on his office, on Bathsheba, on the military, and on the entire nation. The damage cannot be undone, though not even this is beyond the mercy and redemption of God. Grace heals victims, and grace heals perpetrators. But, as a youth pastor once put it to me, “If I break my hand punching you in the face, God will forgive me for that and God will comfort you, but my hand will still be broken and so will your face.”

This episode actually furnishes us with some of the strongest, most pleading language of confession in all of scripture. The introduction to Psalm 51 specifically identifies the assault of Bathsheba as its setting. “I know my transgressions,” the king admits, “And my sin is ever before me.” The psalm becomes a prayer for cleansing and healing and renewal: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a right spirit within me.” It is a bedrock promise of our faith that God hears such prayers, for God is “abounding in steadfast love.” That’s good news.

Still, confession should include acknowledgment of the damage our sin causes and a prayer for God to support the ones we have harmed.

Prayer

Merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart and mind and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. In your mercy, forgive what we have been, help us amend what we are, and direct what we shall be, that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your holy name. Amen.

[from the Book of Common Worship, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)]

Reflection written by Rocky Supinger, Senior Associate Pastor