Holiness and Integrity

This week’s Old Testament lesson (2 Sam. 11:1-15) is the story we usually know as being about David and Bathsheba. It is really more about David and Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband. And even then, I think I’ve been looking at this story a little wrongly. I’ve been thinking of it as being about David and Uriah in relation to Bathsheba. And that is partly true. I think I’m coming to see it as really being mostly about David and God. Well, mostly it’s about God.

You remember the story, of course. David, while walking on his roof, observes Bathsheba bathing. Uriah, who was a soldier, was away at the time fighting the king’s wars against the Ammonites. “So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her” (v.4). Soon Bathsheba sent word to David that she was pregnant.

When Uriah returned from the battlefield, David first directed him to return to his home and wife. David must have thought Uriah’s timely return to his wife would conceal the child’s true paternity.

Uriah, though, in a show of utter selflessness and honor refused to go to the comfort of his own house while the ark of God resides in a tent and while Uriah’s compatriots were away from home on the field of battle. David is not impressed with Uriah’s thorough decency. He resolved to have Uriah murdered instead.

The story is not so much about David and Bathsheba. Their dalliance merely sets up what is to come.

The story is not so much about David and Uriah, although the contrast between the two is striking.

The story is about David and God, and mainly it is about God’s response to David and God’s unshakable devotion to David. Or really, it is about God’s unshakable fidelity to the promises God has made to David, whether David deserves that or not. It is about God’s unshakable fidelity to God’s own integrity.

Now, to be sure, God will speak a severe judgment against David for David’s evil. That comes next week. But God does not retreat from God’s promise to David, either. That was last week. “Forever I will keep my steadfast love for David, and my covenant with him will stand firm. I will establish his line forever, and his throne as long as the heavens endure. . . . Once and for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David. His line shall continue forever, and his throne endure before me like the sun. It shall be established forever like the moon, an enduring witness in the skies” (Ps. 89:28-29, 35-37).

In the end, the point is really not so much Bathsheba’s relationship with David or Uriah’s honor or David’s treachery. It is all about God’s holiness and not nearly so much what we do in response, good or bad. Our response matters, but God‘s integrity to God’s own word is the real point. Samuel is telling us something about God and not so much about Uriah, Bathsheba, or even David.

It is this: God’s holiness is in God’s integrity. So is ours. 

Peace,