2 Samuel, Chapter 11 - David's Darkest Moment | Prophets of Israel Daily

[music] >> Shalom friends and welcome back to the Prophets of Israel daily. This is the second book of Samuel, chapter 11. Brought to you by the Land of Israel Network at the landofisrael.com. Until now, the story of David has been a story of ascent. [music] He defeated Goliath, he survived Saul, he united the tribes, conquered Jerusalem, brought the ark home, and built a kingdom. Every chapter has lifted him higher. Last chapter, his armies crushed Ammon and Aram, and David is at the peak of his power, and that is exactly where this chapter begins. David's at the top, the most dangerous place to be. Because chapter 11 is the hardest chapter in the entire David narrative. It's the chapter our tradition could have quietly buried. And instead, it placed it at the very center of the story of Israel's greatest king. And we have to ask ourselves, why? Why? So, let's open to the very first verse. And it came to pass at the turn of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David remained in Jerusalem. Read that again. At the time when kings go out to battle, David stayed home. The whole tragedy, I think, is hidden in that one sentence. I could be wrong here, Jeremy. You're much more the Tanakh guy than me. But it feels like it's in that sentence. The king who once ran toward the giant now sends others to fight while he stays behind. He's arrived. He's comfortable, as we've learned again and again on this journey, is the most dangerous battlefield of all. >> You know, Ari, the verse says David is walking on the roof. And he's not just in the field with his flock as he started. He's the king of Jerusalem overlooking his kingdom from the rooftop of his palace. He's literally on top of the world, and it's right at that point in his journey that he falls. And, you know, before we go a single verse further, I think we have to stop and really appreciate the fact that this chapter exists at all. Think about every other ancient empire. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Rome, they carved their kings into stone as flawless gods. They erased every defeat and every disgrace. No royal scribe in his history would ever record his own king doing what we're about to read. And yet here, in the Tanakh, the foundational text of Western civilization, taking its greatest hero, the man whose name is in our prayers three times a day, the ancestor of the Messiah himself, and telling us the worst thing he ever did in open and honest detail. I mean, that is the fingerprint of its truth. A book written to flatter a king, hide his sins. A book written by Hashem exposes those things, so that we can all learn from them. 3,000 years later, we're still learning, knowing that true greatness can only be achieved with honesty and accountability. >> That's exactly it. The honesty is the holiness. So, let's stay Let's stay honest. Verse two. And he saw a woman bathing from upon the roof, and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. He sees, he inquires, and the answer comes back. Verse three. "Hello, is that Bathsheba?" Is this not Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And uh notice something there that's really noteworthy. Before David sins, someone actually warns him, and the warning is built into that sentence. She has a father, Eliam. She has a husband, Uriah. She belongs to a family. She's not just an object on a that you're seeing from the top of a roof. She is a daughter and a wife, and the text says so the very moment that David asks. The warning is there. David simply refuses to hear it. And isn't that so often how temptation works? We really fall because we lack information. We fall because we silence the voice already telling us what's right. Maybe I'm just projecting here, but I've experienced that, too. Not in this type of situation, thank God, but we all have it on in different ways. He Look, he's dealing with a married woman. The wife of one of his own loyal soldiers, who at that very moment is risking his life at the front. And David takes her. And friends, listen to the sequence the text gives us. He saw, he sent, he took. Right? Vayar va yishlah va yikah. We've heard that exact rhythm before on this journey. We heard it in Joshua with Achan. Right? I I saw, I desired, I took. And before that, in the garden itself, Chava, right? Eve saw that the tree was good, and she took. Right? Sight, desire, grasping. It's the oldest sequence of human failure in the Torah, in biblical history, in in in history. And here it is again, climbing all the way to the throne of Israel. The The greatest threats to a person are never really enemies from the outside. Often, they're that evil inclination, that appetite, that impulse from within. Okay. Now, here's where the chapter turns from a moral failure into a tragedy. Because Bathsheba sends word, verse five. Harei anochi, I am with child. And instead of stopping, instead of falling on his face the way he eventually will, David begins to cover it up. He summons Uriah home from the front, hoping he'll spend the night with his wife so the child can be attributed to him. And what follows is one of the most condemning contrasts you'll ever see. It's really not a good look for David. It's hard for me even when I read this, it's hard for me to recognize, is this the King David that I know? But I guess it just makes him more human. Anyways, verse 11, Uriah refuses to go home. And he says, "How can I go home when the ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths and shall I go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife?" The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths and shall I go to my house to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? Right? It stings. It stings. You almost wince when you read it. The soldier, the one being deceived, is thinking about the ark, about his brothers in the field, about the whole nation at war, and the king, the anointed one, is thinking about himself. >> [snorts] >> You know, Ari, not just that. I there's just one detail that you really can't just overlook. And I think it's one of the secrets to this whole chapter. Look at the name the text repeats over and over again, Uriah the Hittite, Uriah the Hittite. He was one of David's mighty men, and you know, it's a prophecy that around the king of Israel, it's not just going to be Jews. Hittite is not a last name, it's a nation that he was from. The Tanakh won't let us forget it, and I think it may be because Uriah is not even born of Israel. That's the point. David's mighty men were made up of the righteous among the nations that gathered around David, the most righteous. He chose to join David and the people of Israel. That's like a man that came from the outside and bound his faith to the God of Israel. And in this entire chapter, the person who behaves with the most covenantal loyalty, the one who won't sleep in a warm bed while the ark is in the field, is the stranger, is the foreigner, is the non-Jew who attaches himself to Israel. I mean, we've watched this pattern the whole way through these books, Rahab at the walls of Jericho, Yael in the book of Judges, Ruth in the field. It was her attachment to Israel that gave birth to the Messianic dynasty. She's the great grandmother of King David. It's the outsider who in this decisive moment they embody everything Israel is supposed to be. And Uriah belongs in that exact company. And it should humble every single one of us who is simply born into this inheritance because loyalty to God was never about your bloodline. It was always about your choices. An argument could be made that Uriah the Hittite understood that better than even King David at that very night. >> Yeah, and because Uriah will not betray his brothers, David crosses the final line. Verse 14, he writes a letter and in the it feels like the cruelest twist imaginable, he sends that letter in Uriah's own hand, the loyal soldier carrying his own death sentence not knowing it. The instruction to Joab, the general, put Uriah at the front of the fiercest fighting and pull back from him so that he falls. And indeed, Uriah falls along with other good men of Israel but beside him. And the chapter could have ended there with the cover-up apparently succeeding. Bathsheba mourns, David takes her into his house, a son is born, and on the surface seems like the king got away with it. But Hashem will not allow it. We read the final verse and it lands like a a punch in the gut. Right, Vayara Davar Zeh. Uh Vayara Hadavar Asher Asah David B'einei Hashem. And the thing that David had done was evil in the eyes of the Lord. Everyone else was deceived. Joab stayed silent. The court looked away. But as we learn in Ethics of Our Fathers, there is an Ayin Ro'eh, Ozen Shoma'at, V'chol Ma'asecha B'sefer Nikhtavin. There is an eye that sees, an ear that hears, and all of your deeds are written in a book. While it may have seemed that David had gotten away with it, God saw the roof, God sees the letter, and God knows the truth of what happens. And he says it plainly, "This was evil." And I want to be I want to be careful here because our sages wrestle mightily with this chapter. I don't know if you remember learning this growing up. He did this and he didn't do this, that. There's a famous teaching in the from from our sages that whoever says David simply sinned in the ordinary sense is mistaken. Pointing to the wartime practice that soldiers like Uriah would give their wives a conditional divorce before battle, which complicates the legal picture by her being considered to have been legally divorced at the time. They would send their wife a divorce in case they were taken captive, in case they disappeared, and the wife would never be able to remarry. So, that's why they had this practice. So, that's what happened there. Anyways, you know, our tradition refuses to let David be flattened into a common villain. But notice, the text itself does not take that exit. The verse says, "V'eira, it was evil." Ra, from the word ra, it was evil. And most importantly, David himself will never ever make that excuse. When the prophet Nathan confronts him in the next chapter, David doesn't reach for a legal technicality. He says two words, "Hatati La'Shem, I have sinned before God." And that is the greatness hiding inside this failure of David. >> You know, Ari, that's the part that has always touched my heart the most. I mean, we've talked on this journey about how the very place you fall is sometimes the exact place God hid the blueprint for how you're going to rise. And so, sometimes it's the exact place that God puts you. Out of the darkest night of David's life comes Psalm 51. Lev tahor b'rali Elohim, create in me a pure heart, oh God. It's one of the most beautiful prayers of repentance ever written. It's recited by broken people in every generation and every language for 3,000 years. It was born right here in the ashes of this chapter. And when we look even closer, the woman in this story, Bathsheba, she doesn't disappear. She becomes the mother of Solomon, of of the king who builds the temple, which means the line of the Mashiach comes through Solomon. The Malchut Beit David, the house of David that we pray for every single day, flows directly through the most painful chapter in David's life. That is the secret of Jewish kingship. And honestly, it's the secret of Jewish history. I mean, our greatness was never built on the fantasy of never falling. It was built on the refusal to stay down. And so, a king who had never broken down, what could Psalm 51 could never have been written in a nation that pretends it never fails can never really do teshuvah and return. >> That's right. That's right, Jeremy. You know, and that's why this chapter sits at the center of the story instead of being sidelined or being erased from it like it would in probably most other cultures in the world, most other histories. Because if you're listening to this today and you're carrying something, some failure, and who's not, some hidden thing beneath the surface of your own tent, chapter 11 is speaking directly to you. Right? It doesn't say that you are beyond repair. It says the opposite. It says that the man who fell this far became the eternal king of Israel, not in spite of his capacity to face the truth, but because of it. And here's the deepest reason this chapter can never be buried. If David were flawless, we might be tempted to place our faith in David. Instead, the text forces us to place our faith exactly where it belongs. Not in the king, but in the king of kings. The hope of Israel has never rested on the perfection of human beings. It rests on the covenantal faithfulness of God. The miracle was never that Israel became worthy. The miracle is that Hashem stays faithful to his covenant. And the same God who refused to abandon David has refused in our own lifetime to abandon Israel. And on a national level, right, this could not be more alive for us right now. We've returned to the land. We've built an army that is the envy of the world. And we can tell based on the seething words of anger and hatred towards us that is the clear sign of envy. We've known real power again after 2,000 years. And the warning of David on that rooftop is the warning for our generation. The danger is rarely when we're losing. The danger is when we're winning. When we're comfortable. When the king stays home and stops fighting the battle within. Strength without integrity is exactly how a nation falls. We learned that at Ai, and we are still learning it today. Redemption was never about a people who never stumble. It's about a people who, when confronted with the truth, have the courage to say "Hatati." I've sinned and rise. Now friends, before we close, this is the moment I ask you to do something with what you've heard. Right, Prophet of Israel Daily exists for one reason. A growing family of people around the world have decided together in our hearts that the words of the prophets belong back in the land that gave them birth. And we need them today in our days and our generation. And we've decided to help carry these words out to the world. So, if that's you, join us. Go to the landofisrael.com, become part of our community, and stand with this work so that we can keep walking through these books together day after day. And then do one more thing. Send this episode, or even the whole playlist, it just shows up boom boom boom starting at Joshua, and people can just What's the word, Jeremy, when you just um uh eat it all up? >> Binge. >> Binge. Binge. I always forget that word. I don't forget to do it sometimes, but I forget the word. Anyways, send this to someone who's maybe who's carrying a hidden weight tonight. Someone who needs to hear uh that the king who fell this far still rose. That's how redemption moves one on his heart at a time. Hazak u'amatz, friends. Be'ezrat Hashem, we'll see you tomorrow for chapter 12, where the prophet Nathan >> [music] >> walks into the king's palace, tells a story about a little lamb, and David finally has [music] to face what he's done.