2 Samuel 11-12: In the Spring...

Statue of King David - Jerusalem, Israel

In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war.  With those words the story of David's greatest failure begins.  The problem with being King is that someone has to stay behind and make sure everything is running smoothly and watch over the home front while the brave men go off to war.  David was accustomed to going off to war.  He had been fighting battles since he was only a boy.  What he was not used to was inactivity, so while the men were off doing what he longed to do, David was bored.  He spent his days pacing around the gardens on the roof of his palace and one evening, when he could not sleep, he saw a beautiful woman in her own garden below, bathing in the moonlight.  'She's awake, too', he thought, so he sent someone to see if she would like to keep him company, since he had so few companions left. 

What do you do when the King asks you to come over for a drink?  It was difficult to refuse.  When Bathsheba found David more attractive than she had imagined, you can guess the rest of the story.  Something that may have started out innocent in both of their minds now has unintended consequences.  But everyone is still out of town.  They may be able to cover their tracks.  Bathsheba tells Davis that he doesn't know her husband and how honorable he is.  But David is confident in his power of persuasion.  It is Bathsheba who is right about Uriah.  Unlike David, he is too honorable to sleep with his wife when all the rest of his comrades are out fighting the enemy.  So plan B and Uriah is killed defending the throne and kingdom of David.

David can avoid his conscience and pretend that Uriah was just another casualty of the wars, and that he had pity on his widow and took her in, but God has seen the entire sordid affair and sends Nathan with a scathing rebuke. "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master's house to you, and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.  Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.'

"This is what the LORD says: 'Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity upon you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.  You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.' "  - 2 Sam. 12:7-12

God would have given David almost anything, but he wanted the one thing he could not have, that old knowledge thing back in the garden again.  David wanted to know Bathsheba, and in doing so, the connection to God's protection was severed.