King David’s Fall
In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David remained at Jerusalem.
In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beauti-ful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, "Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" (2 Sam. 11:1-3)
After a warm day, evening was falling. The king strode out on the rooftop for some cool air and a look at his city at dusk. As he gazed, his eye caught the form of an unusually beautiful woman who was bathing without modesty. As to how beautiful she was, the Hebrew is explicit: the woman was "beautiful of appearance, very" (v. 2).
She was young, in the flower of life, and the evening shadows made her even more enticing. The king looked at her... and he continued to look. After the first glance David should have turned the other way and retired to his chamber, but he did not. His look became a sinful stare and then a burning, libidinous, sweaty leer. In that moment David, who had been a man after God's own heart, became a dirty, leering old man. A lustful fixation came over him that would not be denied.
From deadly fixation, King David descended to the next level down, which is rationalization. When his intent became apparent to his servants, one tried to dissuade him, saying, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" But David would not be rebuffed. Some massive rationalization took place in David's mind, perhaps very much as J. Allan Peterson has suggested in The Myth of the Greener Grass:
Uriah is a great soldier but he's probably not much of a husband or a lover-years older than she is—and he'll be away for a long time. This girl needs a little comfort in her loneliness. This is one way I can help her. No one will get hurt. I do not mean anything wrong by it. This is not lust—I have known that many times. This is love. This is not the same as finding a prostitute on the street. God knows that. And to the servant, "Bring her to me."
The mind controlled by lust has an infinite capacity for rationalization:
"How can something that has brought such enjoyment be wrong?"
"God's will for me is to be happy; certainly he would not deny me anything that is essential to my happiness-and this is it!"
"The question here is one of love-I'm acting in love, the highest love."
"My marriage was never God's will in the first place."
"You Christians and your narrow judgmental attitudes make me sick. You are judging me. You are a greater sinner than I'll ever be!"
David's progressive desensitization, relaxation, fixation, and ratio-malization set him up for one of the greatest falls in history-and his degeneration. "So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, 'I am pregnant'" (2 Sam. 11:4-5). David was unaware he had stepped off the precipice and was falling, but that realization would soon arrive-the bottom was coming up fast.
We are all familiar with David's despicable behavior as he became a calculating liar and murderer in arranging Uriah's death to cover his sin with Bathsheba. Suffice it to say that at this time in the king's life, Uriah was a better man drunk than David was sober (v. 13)!
A year later David would repent under the withering accusation of the prophet Nathan. But the miserable consequences could not be undone. As has often been pointed out:
It was the breaking of the tenth commandment (coveting his neighbor's wife) that led David to commit adultery, thus breaking the seventh commandment.
Then, in order to steal his neighbor's wife (thereby breaking the eighth commandment), he committed murder and broke the sixth commandment.
He broke the ninth commandment by bearing false witness against his brother.
This all brought dishonor to his parents and thus broke the fifth commandment.
In this way he broke all of the Ten Commandments that relate to loving one's neighbor as oneself (commandments five through ten).
And in doing so, he dishonored God as well, breaking, in effect, the first four commandments.
David's reign went downhill from there on, despite his laudable repentance:
His baby died.
His beautiful daughter, Tamar, was raped by her half-brother Amnon.
Amnon was murdered by Tamar's full brother Absalom.
Absalom came to so hate his father David for his moral turpitude that he led a rebellion under the tutelage of Bathsheba's resentful grandfather, Ahithophel.
David's reign lost the smile of God. His throne never regained its former stability.
The record of the tragic fall of King David is God-given and should be taken seriously by the church in this "Corinthian age" as a warning regarding the pathology of the human factors that lead to a moral fall:
The desensitization that happens through the conventional sensualities of culture
The deadly syndrome that comes through moral relaxation of discipline
The blinding effects of sensual fixation
The rationalization of those in the grip of lust
In King David's case, the cycle included adultery, lying, murder, familial degeneration, and national decline.
The pathology is clear, and so are the horrible effects of sensuality. Both are meant not only to instruct us but to frighten us—to scare the sensuality right out of us!
10 Commandments
1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.