Lawyers Road Review

Perhaps it was an ordinary Tuesday when David got up and walked around his roof and spied Bathsheba bathing. The worst of human nature takes over, according the the Second Book of Samuel, and as that nature took its course the sinfulness of man became manifest; he sent for her. Later Bathsheba announced she was pregnant. What is a King to do?

Bathsheba was already married, David knew this but the guy was just a Hittite I suppose, so it was OK to hit on the Hittites wife. Later David sent him into the worst part of the battle that occurring and set it up so he would die there, making Bathsheba suddenly and legally available. But first there was an effort to coverup of the sin.

David recalled Uriah from the war and sought the Hittite Uriah’s to rescue him from his sin by first encouraging him to go home, sleep with Bathsheba and it will all turn out OK. She would have a child everyone presumed was her husbands. But Uriah wouldn’t, because his men were in the the field and it would not be honorable to go home and sleep with Bathsheba himself. Frustrated David sends Uriah back to the war with instructions he is to be abandoned during the advance against the enemies lines and of course Uriah dies on the battlefield and David takes Bathsheba as a wife.

Subtext: Uriah is a better man than David.

But in the end the child David sires dies, despite Davids acts of self sacrifice, done apparently to appease God who ostensibly was in charge of life and death, at least that is the way it seemed in the Old Testament.

Bathsheba and David ultimately produce another son. And that boy’s earthly name was Solomon. God called the child Jedidiah.  So I guess it worked out. But there was a lot of pain first. It was a tough neighborhood.