Revisiting David and Bathsheba (II Samuel 11 and 12)

At the turn of the year, when kings go out on campaign, David sent out Joab along with his officers and the army of Israel, and they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. David, however, remained in Jerusalem. One evening David rose from his siesta and strolled about on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing, who was very beautiful. David had inquiries made about the woman and was told, "She is Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam, and wife of (Joab's armor-bearer) Uriah the Hittite."

Then David sent messengers and took her. When she came to him, he had relations with her, at a time when she was just purified after her monthly period. She then returned to her house. But the woman had conceived, and sent the information to David, "I am with child."

As my Young Life Bible teacher told a roomful of teenagers one summer, the first sin is usually laziness. When David, the king of an ancient kingdom surrounded by enemies, declined to lead his own soldiers into battle that spring, he started something terrible.

I thought of David this week when it was revealed that the Governor of South Carolina, an evangelical Christian who had voted in 1998 while in the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach President Bill Clinton for perjury, had slipped away on Fathers' Day weekend to visit his mistress 7,000 miles away (same distance as Moscow) in Buenos Aires.

Gov. Sanford didn't wake up last week saying, "I think I want to ruin my life, my marriage, my career, my ambitions, my sons' lives, and all the trust people have ever given me." Like David, Gov. Sanford made a series of little decisions, which seemed relatively harmless at the time, and he ended up committing a series of mortal sins: adultery, lies, and more lies.

It took Nathan the prophet to set David straight (after David conspired to murder Bathsheba's husband), and the king repented. Even then, civil war destroyed David's family, and his own son was slain by his most loyal general. Gov. Sanford is going to be stabbed by a thousand knives for the rest of his life.


Though some people enjoy watching the mighty fall, especially when a public figure has in the past assumed a moral posture in a divisive public issue involving adultery, I feel much pity for Mark Sanford (pity being empathy uncorrupted by contempt).

We are all capable of lying to ourselves to the point of not being able to discern truth and then sinning in ways that would shock our friends. We all, when we confess our sins with contrition, know that we have been on more than a few sinful errands, even if they didn't take us as far as Buenos Aires.

We know and fear that horrible moment when someone, whether righteous as Nathan or not, says: "You are the man!"