2 Samuel 11:27

11:14-27 Adulteries often occasion murders, and one wickedness is sought to be covered by another. The beginnings of sin are much to be dreaded; for who knows where they will end? Can a real believer ever tread this path? Can such a person be indeed a child of God? Though grace be not lost in such an awful case, the assurance and consolation of it must be suspended. All David's life, spirituality, and comfort in religion, we may be sure were lost. No man in such a case can have evidence to be satisfied that he is a believer. The higher a man's confidence is, who has sunk in wickedness, the greater his presumption and hypocrisy. Let not any one who resembles David in nothing but his transgressions, bolster up his confidence with this example. Let him follow David in his humiliation, repentance, and his other eminent graces, before he thinks himself only a backslider, and not a hypocrite. Let no opposer of the truth say, These are the fruits of faith! No; they are the effects of corrupt nature. Let us all watch against the beginnings of self-indulgence, and keep at the utmost distance from all evil. But with the Lord there is mercy and plenteous redemption. He will cast out no humble, penitent believer; nor will he suffer Satan to pluck his sheep out of his hand. Yet the Lord will recover his people, in such a way as will mark his abhorrence of their crimes, to hinder all who regard his word from abusing the encouragements of his mercy.

The seven days were at an end, or sooner; for he stayed not ninety days from the death of her husband, which the Jews in later times enjoined (n), that it might be known whether with child by her former husband, and so to whom it belonged; and because David did not wait this time, Abarbinel charges it upon him as an additional sin: David sent, and fetched her to his house; took her home to his palace to live with him: and she became his wife; he married her according to the usual form of marriage in those days: and bare him a son; begotten in adultery: but the thing that David had done displeased the Lord; or "was evil in the eyes of the Lord" (o); for though it was not done in the eyes of men, being scarcely or very little known, yet was in the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro throughout the earth, and sees all things that are done: the adultery he had been guilty of with another man's wife was abominable to the Lord, and for which, according to the law, both he and she ought to have been put to death, Leviticus 20:10; the murder of her husband, which he was accessory to, as well as the death of many others, and the marriage of her under such circumstances, were all displeasing to God, and of such an heinous nature, that his pure eyes could not look upon with approbation: the Jews (p) endeavour to excuse David from sin; from the sin of murder, by making Uriah guilty of rebellion and treason, as before observed; and from the sin of adultery, by affirming that it was the

(27) Bare him a son. —Several months must have passed since the beginning of David’s course of sin, and as yet his conscience had not brought him to a sense of what he had done, nor had the prophet Nathan been sent to him. It is to be remembered that during all this time David was not only the civil ruler of his people, but also the head of the theocracy, the great upholder of the worship and the service of God, and his psalms were used as the vehicle of the people’s devotion. If it be asked why he should have been left so long without being brought to a conviction of his sin, one obvious reason is, that this sin might be openly fastened upon him beyond all possibility of denial by the birth of the child. But besides this, however hardened David may appear to have been in passing from one crime to another in the effort to conceal his guilt, yet it is scarcely possible that his conscience should not have been meantime at work and oppressing him with that sense of unconfessed and unforgiven sin which prepared him at last for the visit of Nathan.

2 Samuel 11:27 . When the mourning was past — Which commonly continued only the space of seven days, 1 Samuel 31:13 ; nor could the nature of the thing admit of longer delay, lest the too early birth of the child should discover David’s sin. Bare a son — By which it appears that David continued in the state of impenitence for divers months together, and this notwithstanding his frequent attendance upon God’s ordinances — which is an eminent instance of the corruption of man’s nature, of the deceitfulness of sin, and of the tremendous judgment of God in punishing one sin by delivering a man up to another.

Verse 27. - She... bare him a son. This would be the child whose death is recorded in the next chapter. Afterwards she bare David four sons ( 1 Chronicles 3:5 ), of whom one was Solomon, and another Nathan, the ancestor of our Lord. The thing... displeased the Lord. It was probably during the time of David's victories that success began to work in him its usual results. Too commonly men who have conquered kingdoms have been vanquished by their own strong passions; and David had always evinced a keen appetite for sensuous pleasures. Even at Hebron he had multiplied unto himself wives, and now, raised by repeated victory to be the lord of a vast empire, he ceased to be "base in his own sight" ( 2 Samuel 6:22 ), and lost his self control. And, as was to be expected in a man of such strong qualities, his fall was terrible. But this declaration of the inspired narrator is not made solely for ethical reasons, but is the key to all that follows up to the end of ch. 20. In this chapter we have had the history of David's sin; a year's respite succeeds, as if God would wait and see whether the sinner's own conscience would waken up, and bring him to repentance; but it slumbers on. Then comes the message of reproof, fellowed by earnest penitence, and severe punishment.

It was, perhaps, during this year of hardened persistence in crime that Amnon and his cousin Jonadab also gave the reins to their passions, and prepared the way for the first of the series of crimes that polluted David's home. An early repentance might have saved the son; but the absence of paternal discipline, the loss of respect for his father, and the evil influence of that father's bad example, all urged on the son to the commission of his abominable crime. 2 Samuel 11:27

When the mourning was past; which was seven days, Genesis 1:10 1 Samuel 31:13 . Nor could the nature of the thing admit of longer delay lest the too early birth of the child might discover David’s sin. David sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his wife; by which it appears that David continued in the state of impenitency for divers months together, and this notwithstanding his frequent attendance upon God’s ordinances; which is an eminent instance of the corruption of man’s nature, which is even in the best; and, without Divine assistance, is too strong for them; of the deceitfulness of sin, and of the tremendous judgment of God in punishing one sin, by delivering a man up to another. The thing that David had done, i.e. his adultery and murder, as is evident from the next chapter.

2Sa 11:14-27. Uriah Slain. 14, 15. David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah … Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle—The various arts and stratagems by which the king tried to cajole Uriah, till at last he resorted to the horrid crime of murder—the cold-blooded cruelty of despatching the letter by the hands of the gallant but much-wronged soldier himself, the enlistment of Joab to be a partaker of his sin, the heartless affectation of mourning, and the indecent haste of his marriage with Bath-sheba—have left an indelible stain upon the character of David, and exhibit a painfully humiliating proof of the awful lengths to which the best of men may go when they forfeit the restraining grace of God.