God in the details

God in the details

We just learned that a colleague of ours—someone we considered a friend and “a good guy,” whatever that means now—has resigned as the minister of the church he has served for many years, following his recent arrest by police for soliciting prostitution.

As it happened, this Sunday’s Old Testament text was the story of David and Bathsheba—or “the wife of Uriah” as she’s more often called in scripture. I had already decided to preach on this one passage, not because it’s an easy story of wrongdoing on the part of a king who takes the wife of one of his soldiers and beds her, and righteousness on the part of the soldier who refuses the king’s invitation to sleep with his (the soldier’s) wife while there’s a war going on.

You see, the king had gotten his soldier’s wife pregnant and thus was trying to pass off the deed as that of the soldier by granting him a short leave at home. When the officer proves to be too honorable of a gentleman—“How can I spend the night with my wife while the other soldiers are in the field of battle?!”—the king then gets him drunk, assuming the soldier will do it while intoxicated.

But the soldier does not sleep with his wife even under the influence of alcohol, and so the king sends him back to the war and has him deliver a letter to the military commander. In the letter the king instructs the commander to position the soldier in the front line of fighting and then withdraw the other troops, leaving the soldier to be killed.

No, I decided to preach on this passage because it contains intimate details which don’t allow us to manipulate the big picture to suit our own agendas. One of those intimate details—diluted in some English-language translations—is that the king sent messengers to “take” the woman. That is, she’s abducted by a gang of servants. And as a female in this patriarchal society she has no choice, making this a description of rape. Another detail—it comes immediately after the king has ejaculated into his soldier’s wife—is that she has just had her period. In other words, she wasn’t pregnant to begin with.

As I read aloud this royal rap sheet to the congregation, they counted how many of the Ten Commandments King David manages to break: working backwards, he covets another man’s wife, he is deceitful, he steals his soldier’s wife, he commits adultery, and he has the soldier killed. He certainly doesn’t honor his parents by his actions.

Regarding the four other commandments—those having to do with God, who made David king in the first place—they prompt the question, “Where is God in this story?” God is not given an active role or mentioned by the narrator or any of the characters in 2 Samuel 11. Certainly a detail worth noting.

Has David assumed god-like power and authority? Does he objectify people and idolize his own status? Having earlier promised to serve God as ruler of God’s people, is David breaking that promise by his actions, thus taking the LORD’s name in vain?

As for remembering to keep one day holy, perhaps if David had attended to this weekly detail he might have remembered to honor his one and only God and to respect Bathsheba and her husband Uriah and all the other people effected by his behavior.

This especially holds true for those of us who work on the Sabbath.