Fr Eddie Lalor turns to the Bible and the story of King David and Bathsheba to discover
How to Tell a Story
2 Samuel 11:1 - 12:25 |
The opening is crisp:
In the spring of the year, the time when kings go forth to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.
(2 Samuel 11.1)
THE KING
What unrolls next is a horror story. David after his siesta walks on the roof of his house. He sees a beautiful woman bathing in a neighbouring house. He enquires who she is. He is told ‘Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?’ David the king sends for her and rapes her. She goes back to her house and later sends a message to the king that she is with child.
What does David do? He goes for damage control. He sends for Uriah who is at the battlefront under Joab. David chats with Uriah and then says ‘Go down to your house, and wash your feet’ but Uriah slept at the door of the king’s house and did not go down to his house. The servants tell David. David then tries to cajole Uriah to go to his house but he points out that Joab and the army are living in great discomfort so he cannot go to his own house and be at ease. David makes a third attempt. He makes Uriah drunk but Uriah still refuses to go to his house.
THE SOLDIER
We have to see the huge contrast that is drawn between the two men. Uriah is a Hittite, a foreigner who adopted the ways of the Jews but remains a blow-in. He is a very simple man totally loyal to the king and the king’s army. David the king, however, has not gone into the horror of battle. He remains in the safety and comfort of Jerusalem betraying the valiant warrior, Uriah. Worse is to follow.
In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down, and die”. Uriah, that most loyal man, goes back to the battle front, unknowingly carrying his own death warrant in his pocket. Joab carries out the ‘orders from above’ and Uriah dies. Joab sends a messenger to David to tell him that Uriah is dead, as the king wished. David is totally untroubled. He has solved his problem and that is all that matters. He sends the messenger back to Joab ‘Do not let this matter trouble you, for the sword devours now one and now another; strengthen your attack upon the city, and overthrow it’.
When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she made lamentation for her husband. And when the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son.
The story now turns but the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.
THE PROPHET
Nathan is a prophet, a man who conveys God’s message to people. It’s a hard job and no one wants to be a prophet.
And the Lord sent Nathan to David. Nathan knows that David is a violent man. He goes to the king’s house. He says to the servants “Is himself in?” They tell him “yes”. Nathan wants to see the king. He is told the king is stressed with all the gossip. Come back next week or next month. You know the word on the street. Nathan says, My word is from above. He goes in to the king. David looks at him knowing that Nathan rarely brings good news. “Oh, it’s you.” Nathan decides not to confront the king but to creep up on him. He tells a story, one of the cleverest, most touching stories in all literature.
There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his morsel, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveller to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but took the poor man’s lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.
David just cannot see it. Instead David takes the opportunity “to king”. Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan,
“As the Lord lives the man who has done this deserves to die; and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity”.
Nathan leans forward and plunges the dagger of Truth into the heart of the king. “YOU ARE THE MAN”. Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel. Nathan, speaking on behalf of God, froths forth a tantrum of anger and abuse and condemnation against David. He recounts all the gifts and blessings God has given to David. And how has David behaved in return: You have smitten Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife....For you did it secretly but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.
David’s response is limp. He just says I have sinned before the Lord.
After all that, Nathan says The Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die. But there is a surprising consequence, Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die. Nathan wipes the sweat from his brow and goes home.
THE CHILD
David tries damage control again. He sets out to wheedle God.
And the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became sick. Now the Jews believed that you can influence God, that you can argue and fight and bargain with God. So David sets out to conquer God by prayer and fasting. But he had not taken notice of those fatal words Thus says the Lord. God never goes back on those words. David’s efforts are in vain. The child dies. David gets up and washes himself and moves on. His servants are again amazed. They ask him how could he just move on like that. David, always the pragmatist, says: the child is dead. I did my best. We have to continue with life. Bathsheba conceives and bears a son and he is called Solomon. God now sends a very different message through Nathan that He loves Solomon and gave him the name Jedidiah which means the beloved of the Lord. Solomon is an ancestor of Christ.
Oh, yes. All this is a sort of sacrilege to the original story. Do read it. Do not read it in one of the modern translations which tell the story in tabloid English, but read it in the Revised Standard Version of the bible which recounts it in elegantly elegant English.
It’s the way to tell a story.
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