_PENITENCE AND CHASTISEMENT._
2 SAMUEL xii. 13-25.
When Nathan ended his message, plainly and strongly though he had
spoken, David indicated no irritation, made no complaint against the
prophet, but simply and humbly confessed--"I have sinned." It is so
common for men to be offended when a servant of God remonstrates
with them, and to impute their interference to an unworthy motive,
and to the desire of some one to hurt and humiliate them, that it is
refreshing to find a great king receiving the rebuke of the Lord's
servant in a spirit of profound humility and frank confession. Very
different was the experience of John the Baptist when he remonstrated
with Herod. Very different was the experience of the famous Chrysostom
when he rebuked the emperor and empress for conduct unworthy of
Christians. Very different has been the experience of many a faithful
minister in a humbler sphere, when, constrained by a sense of duty, he
has gone to some man of influence in his flock, and spoken seriously
to him of sins which bring a reproach on the name of Christ. Often it
has cost the faithful man days and nights of pain; girding himself for
the duty has been like preparing for martyrdom; and it has been really
martyrdom when he has had to bear the long malignant enmity of the
man whom he rebuked. However vile the conduct of David may have been,
it is one thing in his favour that he receives his rebuke with perfect
humility and submission; he makes no attempt to palliate his conduct
either before God or man; but sums up his whole feeling in these
expressive words, "I have sinned against the Lord."
To this frank acknowledgment Nathan replied that the Lord had put
away his sin, so that he would not undergo the punishment of death.
It was his own judgment that the miscreant who had stolen the ewe
lamb should die, and as that proved to be himself, it indicated
the punishment that was due to him. That punishment, however, the
Lord, in the exercise of His clemency, had been pleased to remit.
But a palpable proof of His displeasure was to be given in another
way--the child of Bathsheba was to die. It was to become, as it were,
the scapegoat for its father. In those times father and child were
counted so much one that the offence of the one was often visited on
both. When Achan stole the spoil at Jericho, not only he himself, but
his whole family, shared his sentence of death. In this case of David
the father was to escape, but the child was to die. It may seem hard,
and barely just. But death to the child, though in form a punishment,
might prove to be great gain. It might mean transference to a higher
and brighter state of existence. It might mean escape from a life
full of sorrows and perils to the world where there is no more pain,
nor sorrow, nor death, because the former things are passed away.
We cannot pass from the consideration of David's great penitence
for his sin without dwelling a little more on some of its features.
It is in the fifty-first Psalm that the working of his soul is
best unfolded to us. No doubt it has been strongly urged by certain
modern critics that that psalm is not David's at all; that it belongs
to some other period, as the last verse but one indicates, when
the walls of Jerusalem were in ruins;--most likely the period of
the Captivity. But even if we should have to say of the last two
verses that they must have been added at another time, we cannot but
hold the psalm to be the outpouring of David's soul, and not the
expression of the penitence of the nation at large. If ever psalm
was the expression of the feelings of an individual it is this one.
And if ever psalm was appropriate to King David it is this one. For
the one thing which is uppermost in the soul of the writer is his
personal relation to God. The one thing that he values, and for which
all other things are counted but dung, is friendly intercourse with
God. This sin no doubt has had many other atrocious effects, but the
terrible thing is that it has broken the link that bound him to God,
it has cut off all the blessed things that come by that channel, it
has made him an outcast from Him whose lovingkindness is better than
life. Without God's favour life is but misery. He can do no good to
man; he can do no service to God. It is a rare thing even for good
men to have such a profound sense of the blessedness of God's favour.
David was one of those who had it in the profoundest degree; and as
the fifty-first Psalm is full of it, as it forms the very soul of its
pleadings, we cannot doubt that it was a psalm of David.
The humiliation of the Psalmist before God is very profound, very
thorough. His case is one for simple mercy; he has not the shadow of
a plea in self-defence. His sin is in every aspect atrocious. It is
the product of one so vile that he may be said to have been shapen
in iniquity and conceived in sin. The aspect of it as sin against God
is so overwhelming that it absorbs the other aspect--the sin against
man. Not but that he has sinned against man too, but it is the sin
against God that is so awful, so overwhelming.
Yet, if his sin abounds, the Psalmist feels that God's grace abounds
much more. He has the highest sense of the excellence and the
multitude of God's lovingkindnesses. Man can never make himself so
odious as to be beyond the Divine compassion. He can never become
so guilty as to be beyond the Divine forgiveness. "Blot out my
transgressions," sobs David, knowing that it can be done. "Purge me
with hyssop," he cries, "and I _shall_ be clean; wash me, and I shall
be whiter than the snow. Create in me a clean heart, and renew a
right spirit within me."
But this is not all; it is far from all. He pleads most plaintively
for the restoration of God's friendship. "Cast me not away from Thy
presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me,"--for that would be
hell; "Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and uphold me with
Thy free Spirit,"--for that is heaven. And, with the renewed sense of
God's love and grace, there would come a renewed power to serve God
and be useful to men. "Then will I teach transgressors Thy ways; and
sinners shall be converted unto Thee. O Lord, open Thou my lips; and
my mouth shall show forth Thy praise." Deprive me not for ever of Thy
friendship, for then life would be but darkness and anguish; depose
me not for ever from Thy ministry, continue to me yet the honour and
the privilege of converting sinners unto Thee. Of the sacrifices of
the law it was needless to think, as if they were adequate to purge
away so overwhelming a sin. "Thou desirest not sacrifice, else I
would give it: Thou delightest not in burnt-offering. The sacrifices
of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God,
Thou wilt not despise."
With all his consciousness of sin, David has yet a profound faith
in God's mercy, and he is forgiven. But as we have seen, the Divine
displeasure against him is to be openly manifested in another form,
because, in addition to his personal sin, he has given occasion to
the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.
This is an aggravation of guilt which only God's children can commit.
And it is an aggravation of a most distressing kind, enough surely
to warn off every Christian from vile self-indulgence. The blasphemy
to which David had given occasion was that which denies the reality
of God's work in the souls of His people. It denies that they are
better than others. They only make more pretence, but that pretence
is hollow, if not hypocritical. There is no such thing as a special
work of the Holy Ghost in them, and therefore there is no reason
why any one should seek to be converted, or why he should implore
the special grace of the Spirit of God. Alas! how true it is that
when any one who occupies a conspicuous place in the Church of God
breaks down, such sneers are sure to be discharged on every side!
What a keen eye the world has for the inconsistencies of Christians!
With what remorseless severity does it come down on them when they
fall into these inconsistencies! Sins that would hardly be thought
of if committed by others,--what a serious aspect they assume when
committed by them! Had it been Nebuchadnezzar, for example, that
treated Uriah as David did, who would have thought of it a second
time? What else could you expect of Nebuchadnezzar? Let a Christian
society or any other Christian body be guilty of a scandal, how do
the worldly newspapers fasten on it like treasure-trove, and exult
over their humbled victim, like Red Indians dancing their war dances
and flourishing their tomahawks over some miserable prisoner. The
scorn is very bitter, and sometimes it is very unjust; yet perhaps
it has on the whole a wholesome effect, just because it stimulates
vigilance and carefulness on the part of the Church. But the worst
of the case is, that on the part of unbelievers it stimulates that
blasphemy which is alike dishonouring to God and pernicious to man.
Virtually this blasphemy denies the whole work of the Holy Spirit in
the hearts of men. It denies the reality of any supernatural agency
of the Spirit in one more than in all. And denying the work of the
Spirit, it makes men careless about the Spirit; it neutralises the
solemn words of Christ, "Ye must be born again." It throws back
the kingdom of God, and it turns back many a pilgrim who had been
thinking seriously of beginning the journey to the heavenly city,
because he is now uncertain whether such a city exists at all.
Hardly has Nathan left the king's house when the child begins to
sicken, and the sickness becomes very great. We should have expected
that David would be concerned and distressed, but hardly to the
degree which his distress attained. In the intensity of his anxiety
and grief there is something remarkable. A new-born infant could
scarcely have taken that mysterious hold on a father's heart which
a little time is commonly required to develop, but which, once it
is there, makes the loss even of a little child a grievous blow,
and leaves the heart sick and sore for many a day. But there is
something in an infant's agony which unmans the strongest heart,
especially when it comes in convulsive fits that no skill can allay.
And should one, in addition, be tortured with the conviction that
the child was suffering on one's own account, one's distress might
well be overpowering. And this was David's feeling. His sin was ever
before him. As he saw that suffering infant he must have felt as if
the stripes that should have fallen on him were tearing the poor
babe's tender frame, and crushing him with undeserved suffering.
Even in ordinary cases, it is a mysterious thing to see an infant in
mortal agony. It is solemnizing to think that the one member of the
family who has committed no actual sin should be the first to reap
the deadly wages of sin. It leads us to think of mankind as one tree
of many branches; and when the wintry frost begins to prevail it is
the youngest and tenderest branchlets that first droop and die. Oh!
how careful should those in mature years be, and especially parents,
lest by their sins they bring down a retribution which shall fall
first on their children, and perhaps the youngest and most innocent
of all! Yet how often do we see the children suffering for the sins
of their parents, and suffering in a way which, in this life at
least, admits of no right remedy! In that "bitter cry of outcast
London," which fell some years ago on the ears of the country, by
far the most distressing note was the cry of infants abandoned by
drunken parents before they could well walk, or living with them in
hovels where blows and curses came in place of food and clothing
and kindness--children brought up without aught of the sunshine of
love, every tender feeling nipped and shrivelled in the very bud by
the frost of bitter, brutal cruelty. And if in ordinary families
children are not made to suffer so palpably for their parents' sins,
yet suffer they do in many ways sufficiently serious. Wherever there
is a bad example, wherever there is a laxity of principle, wherever
God is dishonoured, the sin reacts upon the children. Their moral
texture is relaxed; they learn to trifle with sin, and, trifling with
sin, to disbelieve in the retribution for sin. And where conscience
has not been altogether destroyed in the parent, and remorse for sin
begins to prevail, and retribution to come, it is not what he has to
suffer in his own person that he feels most deeply, but what has to
be borne and suffered by his children. Does any one ask why God has
constituted society so that the innocent are thus implicated in the
sin of the guilty? The answer is, that this arises not from God's
constitution, but from man's perversion of it. Why, we may ask, do
men subvert God's moral order? Why do they break down His fences and
embankments, and, contrary to the Divine plan, let ruinous streams
pour their destructive waters into their homes and enclosures? If the
human race had preserved from the beginning the constitution which
God gave them, obeyed His law both individually and as a social body,
such things would not have been. But reckless man, in his eagerness
to have his own way, disregards the Divine arrangement, and plunges
himself and his family into the depths of woe.
There is something even beyond this, however, that arrests our notice
in the behaviour of David. Though Nathan had said that the child
would die, he set himself most earnestly, by prayer and fasting, to
get God to spare him. Was this not a strange proceeding? It could
be justified only on the supposition that the Divine judgment was
modified by an unexpressed condition that, if David should humble
himself in true repentance, it would not have to be inflicted.
Anyhow, we see him throwing his whole soul into these exercises:
engaging in them so earnestly that he took no regular food, and in
place of the royal bed he was content to lie upon the earth. His
earnestness in this was well fitted to show the difference between a
religious service gone through with becoming reverence, because it
is the proper thing to do, and the service of one who has a definite
end in view, who seeks a definite blessing, and who wrestles with God
to obtain it. But David had no valid ground for expecting that, even
if he should repent, God would avert the judgment from the child;
indeed, the reason assigned for it showed the contrary--because he
had given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme.
And so, after a very weary and dismal week, the child died. But
instead of abandoning himself to a tumult of distress when this event
took place, he altogether changed his demeanour. His spirit became
calm, "he arose from the earth, and washed, and anointed himself,
and changed his apparel, and he came into the house of the Lord and
worshipped; then he came to his own house, and when he required, they
set bread before him, and he did eat." It seemed to his servants
a strange proceeding. The answer of David showed that there was a
rational purpose in it. So long as he thought it possible that the
child's life might be spared, he not only continued to pray to that
effect, but he did everything to prevent his attention from being
turned to anything else, he did everything to concentrate his soul
on that one object, and to let it appear to God how thoroughly it
occupied his mind. The death of the child showed that it was not
God's will to grant his petition, notwithstanding his deep repentance
and earnest prayer and fasting. All suspense was now at an end, and,
therefore, all reason for continuing to fast and pray. For David to
abandon himself to the wailings of aggravated grief at this moment
would have been highly wrong. It would have been to quarrel with the
will of God. It would have been to challenge God's right to view the
child as one with its father, and treat it accordingly.
And there was yet another reason. If his heart still yearned on the
child, the re-union was not impossible, though it could not take
place in this life. "I shall go to him, but he shall not return unto
me." The glimpse of the future expressed in these words is touching
and beautiful. The relation between David and that little child is
not ended. Though the mortal remains shall soon crumble, father and
child are not yet done with one another. But their meeting is not to
be in this world. Meet again they certainly shall, but "I shall go to
him, and he shall not return to me."
And this glimpse of the future relation of parent and child, separated
here by the hand of death, has ever proved most comforting to bereaved
Christian hearts. Very touching and very comforting it is to light on
this bright view of the future at so early a period of Old Testament
history. Words cannot express the desolation of heart which such
bereavements cause. When Rachel is weeping for her children she cannot
be comforted if she thinks they are not. But a new light breaks on her
desolate heart when she is assured that she may go to them, though
they shall not return to her. Blessed, truly, are the dead who die
in the Lord, and, however painful the stroke that removed them,
blessed are their surviving friends. Ye shall go to them, though they
shall not return to you. How you are to recognise them, how you are
to commune with them, in what place they shall be, in what condition
of consciousness, you cannot tell; but "you shall go to them;" the
separation shall be but temporary, and who can conceive the joy of
re-union, re-union never to be broken by separation for evermore?
One other fact we must notice ere passing from the record of David's
confession and chastisement,--the moral courage which he showed in
delivering the fifty-first Psalm to the chief musician, and thus
helping to keep alive in his own generation and for all time coming
the memory of his trespass. Most men would have thought how the ugly
transaction might most effectually be buried, and would have tried to
put their best face on it before their people. Not so David. He was
willing that his people and all posterity should see him the atrocious
transgressor he was--let them think of him as they pleased. He saw
that this everlasting exposure of his vileness was essential towards
extracting from the miserable transaction such salutary lessons as it
might be capable of yielding. With a wonderful effort of magnanimity,
he resolved to place himself in the pillory of public shame, to expose
his memory to all the foul treatment which the scoffers and libertines
of every after-age might think fit to heap on it. It is unjust to
David, when unbelievers rail against him for his sin in the matter
of Uriah, to overlook the fact that the first public record of the
transaction came from his own pen, and was delivered to the chief
musician, for public use. Infidels may scoff, but this narrative will
be a standing proof that the foolishness of God is wiser than men. The
view given to God's servants of the weakness and deceitfulness of
their hearts; the warning against dallying with the first movements
of sin; the sight of the misery which follows in its wake; the
encouragement which the convicted sinner has to humble himself before
God; the impulse given to penitential feeling; the hope of mercy
awakened in the breasts of the despairing; the softer, humbler, holier
walk when pardon has been got and peace restored,--such lessons as
these, afforded in every age by this narrative, will render it to
thoughtful hearts a constant ground for magnifying God. "O the depth of
the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable
are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!"