15 After Nathan had gone home, the LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill.16 David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying in sackcloth on the ground. 17 The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them.
18 On the seventh day the child died. David’s attendants were afraid to tell him that the child was dead, for they thought, “While the child was still living, he wouldn’t listen to us when we spoke to him. How can we now tell him the child is dead? He may do something desperate.”
19 David noticed that his attendants were whispering among themselves, and he realized the child was dead. “Is the child dead?” he asked.
“Yes,” they replied, “he is dead.”
20 Then David got up from the ground. After he had washed, put on lotions and changed his clothes, he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped. Then he went to his own house, and at his request they served him food, and he ate.
21 His attendants asked him, “Why are you acting this way? While the child was alive, you fasted and wept, but now that the child is dead, you get up and eat!”
22 He answered, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The LORD may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ 23 But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”
24 Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and made love to her. She gave birth to a son, and they named him Solomon. The LORD loved him; 25 and because the LORD loved him, he sent word through Nathan the prophet to name him Jedidiah.
26 Meanwhile Joab fought against Rabbah of the Ammonites and captured the royal citadel. 27 Joab then sent messengers to David, saying, “I have fought against Rabbah and taken its water supply. 28 Now muster the rest of the troops and besiege the city and capture it. Otherwise I will take the city, and it will be named after me.”
29 So David mustered the entire army and went to Rabbah, and attacked and captured it. 30 David took the crown from their king’s head, and it was placed on his own head. It weighed a talent of gold, and it was set with precious stones. David took a great quantity of plunder from the city 31 and brought out the people who were there, consigning them to labor with saws and with iron picks and axes, and he made them work at brickmaking. David did this to all the Ammonite towns. Then he and his entire army returned to Jerusalem.
Points of Interest
- ‘the LORD struck the child’--here we go with God striking people again, and this one bothers me even more than the others. With Saul and his evil spirit (1 Samuel 16:1-13, Monday, March 14th), there was some ambiguity as to whether God was actively harming Saul. With Uzzah (2 Samuel 6, last Sunday’s passage), the punishment was swifter and more severe than I’m completely comfortable with, but at least I could see what Uzzah had done to provoke God’s reaction. This time around, a baby gets struck. I can understand that God would not want to allow David and Bathsheba to murder Bathsheba’s husband and then just form a nice little family and move on as if nothing had happened. But I have a problem with the fact that the baby, obviously a victim and not a perpetrator in the whole affair, bears the brunt of the punishment. I have to confess that I wonder if the narrator is mistaken here, wrongly interpreting the child’s death as the action of God; but I have no basis for that hypothesis beyond my own discomfort with the story. I keep coming around to the thought that God and I seem to place different values on matters of life and death. To my mind, there’s nothing worse than death. But God seems to consistently employ death as the better option in certain situations. That could be because God rates the alternatives more unacceptable than I do, or it could be because God knows death isn’t as bad as I think it is. Apparently, God considers it so important that this particular child never be king that God is willing to kill him--either because God knows how awful it would be were this child to become king, or because God knows that death isn’t a terribly awful fate for this child. I’m still not able to say, ‘Oh, now I see how striking this child was really a great idea.’ But at least it gives me a possibly fruitful way to talk with God about it: God, how do you and I see death differently, and what can I learn from it?
- ‘The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground’--apparently, as when he danced in his skimpy ephod a bit too vigorously for Michal’s taste (again 2 Samuel 6, last Sunday’s passage), David is behaving less dignified than a king--even a king with a dying child--is expected to act. I take this as a good sign that David is recovering from his self-indulgent phase and returning to what we always liked about him. He’s back to his theme: ‘I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.’ David is, once again, willing to look like a fool, banking everything on his passion for God.
- ‘The LORD may be gracious to me and let the child live’--it’s worth noting, for all of my angst about the God striking the child, that the child’s own father puts his hope in God’s goodness. David considers himself to blame for what has happened, and he turns to God as the one who may just be able to bail him out.
- ‘I will go to him, but he will not return to me’--I find this a poignant way of putting it, both sad and hopeful. They will meet again, but only by David following his son into death.
- ‘The LORD loved him’--this is a surprise turn of events. David and Bathsheba have another son, and this one--for unexplained reasons--is a particular favorite of God. I wonder if God simply wants to honor the change of heart God sees in David and Bathsheba. The first child was conceived in an atmosphere of selfishness, greed, lust, lies, betrayal, murder, and neglect of duty. This one comes to life in the midst of humility, quiet sadness, and tender care. This is a child God wouldn’t mind seeing as king.
- ‘sent word through Nathan the prophet to name him Jedidiah’--God has his own nickname for Solomon. It means, ‘God-loved’ (Baldwin).
- ‘Meanwhile Joab fought against Rabbah’--all of this time, Joab has continued the campaign against the Ammonites.
- ‘Otherwise I will take the city’--this is both wise and kind on Joab’s part. He’s seen, with David under Saul and with Abner under Ish-Bosheth, how things get hairy when a general becomes more successful and popular than the king he serves. He’d rather avoid a song like, ‘Joab Defeated the Ammonites, While David Stayed Home,’ making it to the top of the charts. Plus, he’s giving the newly revived David the chance to get back in the game.
- ‘So David mustered the entire army’--this whole, sad debacle started when David decided not to show up for work. Now, we’re back on track.
Taking it Home
- For you: David fasts as a way to turn his heart and attention back toward God. Have you been fasting from something during this season? How is your fast going? Is there something specific you are fasting for? What have you been learning, and what has God been teaching you? If you aren’t fasting from anything specific, pick something today that will help you direct your attention to God.
- For your six: God’s willingness in this passage to let the child die is, at best, unsettling. God can do things that are pretty hard to understand. How do your six view God? If you don’t know, consider asking them. Do they see God as loving and kind? Distant and aloof? Angry and ready to strike down babies, the elderly, and anyone in between? Pray that God would give your six an understanding of who God actually is. Ask God to take away any views they have of God that might misrepresent him and get in the way of them turning to him.
- For our church: Instead of ignoring, repressing or excusing it, David lets the weight of what has happened hit him. He lets himself be troubled by this horrible situation, and rightly so: it is troubling. Pray that our church wouldn’t shy away from troubling situations, but would wrestle through and come before God with them. Pick a recent troubling issue in the news, any one that struck you as less than ideal. Don’t worry; I’m sure there are lots to choose from. Pray about that troubling issue today, asking God to show his power and redemption in that situation.
- For families: Talk together about fasting. The thing I find most important about fasting is what I am fasting for, not what I am giving up. Talk together about something that would be worth fasting for--maybe some of your Lenten prayers from your poster. Consider fasting from something together as a family as a way of saying, “God, we are really serious about these things.” Talk about the choices you might face to do something or not while fasting. Check in, support each other, and see how God responds in your faith experiment.
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