Women with a Story to Tell: The 'Merry' Wives of David: Bathsheba b.

“Thou art the man!” 

 “Everyone keep cool; nothing going on here. We’re just the people of God sitting around talking, right?” 

“Thou art the man!”

“Who keeps saying that? And why is he speaking King James English? Maybe we should wake up; it’s a nightmare, right?”

 Yes, David and Bathsheba, it is a nightmare, but you are not asleep. Instead, Nathan the prophet is here in the king’s court, and he has been telling a story. Wind it back a little. Listen to the story that Nathan is telling.

“There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb that he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare and drink from his cup and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared that for the guest who had come to him” (II Samuel 12:1-4).

 A sad story, is it not? What do you think about it, David?

“Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, ‘As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity’” (II Samuel 12:5-6).

 King David the king reacts as he should. This is a great injustice, so the king makes a judgment. Now, where is that cold-hearted lawless man?

 “Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man!”

 “What? Is this some kind of joke? I never stole a sheep. What do you mean, Nathan? You are a prophet, just tell me what God says.”  

 “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your bosom and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah, and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites” (II Samuel 12:7-9).

 “Oh, my God! He knows everything!”

 David is trapped in a web of his own deceit. 

 “The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley” (‘go often astray’, by Robert Burns, "To a Mouse"). 

"Be sure your sin will find you out” (by the LORD God, Numbers 32:23).