II. THE PROGRESS OF SIN NOW OPENS BEFORE US. Indolence and sensuality worked out their regular and invariable effect upon the erring monarch. He rises from his bed in the evening time — the bed of luxury, every passion pampered, every avenue to sin wide open, nothing further necessary to bring about his ruin than some external object to move the overt act of evil. The wife of Uriah, one of his principal and most faithful generals, becomes the object of temptation. The temptation triumphs, and the first work of iniquity is accomplished. Sin now becomes compulsory; the fear of detection and infamy, perhaps of personal danger from the just wrath of Uriah, drives the royal culprit to every mean and despicable expedient in order to conceal his transgression. Sin now drives on the soul to violence; and with cold and unfeeling treachery Uriah is made the innocent messenger of his own destruction. What a series of close-linked iniquities — indolence, luxury, lust adultery, hypocrisy, falsehood, treachery, murder! And this is not all; we have here but the single series of crimes; there is a complication likewise which we must not overlook if we would read off the history in all its forcible and solemn instructiveness. Bathsheba is made an accomplice in sin, a moral victim to the guilty passion of the king, while her husband is sacrifced to his fears. Here are souls and bodies of men, precious lives, sported away under the hellish dominion of triumphant guilt! What complicated crime! What an awful history!

III. THE CONSUMMATION OF EVIL. All that we have hitherto looked at belongs only to substantial guilt; guilt branded, it is true, with atrocity, but the consummation of evil still remains for our reflections. Many months had elapsed since the commencement of this wretched business, and a long period of time, too, had intervened between the death of Uriah and the visit of Nathan, to awaken the royal transgressor to repentance. Throughout this whole interval, there was no movement of remorse towards heaven in the heart of the king; he feared the reproof of man, and the wrath of man, as we have seen, and laboured by murderous efforts to avoid them; but there was yet no remorse towards God, no recognition of his turpitude, as viewed by the Most High, no fear of Divine censure, of Divine indignation, no effort to arrest or even deprecate the wrath of Jehovah. Thus, then, David had fallen into practical infidelity; every active consideration of God's existence, omniscience, and justice had vanished away. What a mystery is sin; it possesses us to self-destruction, while it diminishes nothing of our sagacity or skill in arraying and condemning the guilt of others. It is enough for satanic malice and purpose, if the soul be filled with every holy sentiment, and wisdom, and quality for external occupation, provided it remain dead to its own interests, unmoved by its own guilt! This prostration of judgment, this death of conscience, consummated the spiritual misery of the fallen monarch. How long should such a state have lasted, if God had not specially recalled the sinner to repentance? For ever! There was no human power, no natural remedy left for his restoration. To reclaim him, fear had failed, and conscience had failed, and memory of past obedience had failed. Reason was stupified, and stupified for ever, if God had not, in his faithfulness and mercy, sent a special waffling to his soul, calling forth repentance. Let us pause here one short moment, while we collect together the admonition, which may be adduced from what we have now perused.

1. And first, as we saw the steady, onward progress of sin, from the almost imperceptible germ of indolence and luxury, to the actual crime of murder, and the utter infatuation of all spiritual sense and judgment, let us hence, I say, beware of the least compliance with iniquity. We often trifle with sins of small account, set limitations to our compliance with the follies or luxuries, or harmless indulgences of the world, as they are termed.

2. Reflect with horror on the complication of sin. For our self-gratification alone it is that we are led on to crime at first; that gratification must have victims; aye, if the besetting evil within us be but pride or covetousness, it must have victims. Some must suffer for our indulgence, many will become hardened by our example in guilt; for often the man who is called, in the false language of the world, his own enemy alone, will have to answer, perhaps, for the eternal death of others.

3. Trust nothing to your own shrewdness of discernment between good and evil. your own spiritual-mindedness and holiness, about the external objects and other men. Our profession is worth nothing, our spiritual attainments no proof of personal approbation with God, of personal holiness, while they range beyond self. We must deal with self. prove self, pass judgment on self, and live in communion, secret union with Christ, or our religion is but sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.

IV. THE RETURN TO VIRTUE. Mark the proof; here is a king, with all the powers of life and death over his subjects, in his own will, in his own hands. He is confronted by a man of humble state, of lowly lot, a man devoid of ally earthly influence. By this man he is accused of a grievous murder, and that, too in broad noon day, before his courtiers and counsellors, on his very throne of judgment; and so far from yielding to resentment at so daring an intrusion, or expressing the least displeasure at the abrupt and public accusation with which he is so assailed, he sinks at once into contrition, and confesses his iniquity — "I have sinned against the Lord." This is what we need, a thorough conviction of our sins now; we shall have it certainly in the world to come, if it be not here attained. But conviction there is too late for anything but eternal torment; we must have it here, that under a thorough sense of our lost condition, we may apply to the rich mercies of the Redeemer for pardon.

V. PARDON I And may pardon be had for such iniquities as adultery and murder — for such extremes of crime? Yes, for all transgressions; the vilest may hope; this history is for our encouragement, to seek that grace which never was denied to suppliant man — "Christ is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him."

VI. NO ENCOURAGEMENT TO CARELESS SIN, and fruitless admission of criminality, with the secret or avowed purpose of continuance in crime. That from which nature shrinks with more alarm than all the threatenings of eternal misery can inspire is present suffering; that was inflicted, in all its severity, upon David.

(C. M. Fleury, A. M.)

1. Prosperity enervated him. Prosperity is a danger to men of David's mould. Contrast the readiness with which he went forth in the old days when Saul hunted him as a bird! He was standing in high places! He needed clinging grace.

2. Prosperity induced sloth. Our inner life is very responsive to our outward condition.

II. WHEN OPPORTUNITY AND TEMPTATION MEET THERE IS STRUGGLE. Without reserve the Bible tells the shameful story — shows how one sin drags after it another until it compels you to write against the name of the man (not free from the weakness of human imperfections, yet sincere and upright) — to write against that man the horrible list of crimes, deception, adultery, injustice, treachery, and murder.

III. THE INFLUENCES WHICH SAPPED THE WALL OF HIS WILL. You feel instinctively such a fall could not have been instantaneous — fifty years old, a devoted, upright man of God to so fall. The tempest has not strength in it to snap such an oak if the heart of the tree is sound. The sacred narrative shows the weakness, reveals the secret decay.

1. Close the doors of imagination against carnal imagery; make a covenant with your eves and keep it. There was a "prepared plate" in the camera of David's mind, or the beauty of Bathsheba had been as nought to him. Take heed where you go for your recreations. Idle strolling may in some moods lead to pitfalls. He concealed when he should have confessed. Better to have crept to the mercy-seat covered with his filth than, as he did, wait in the palace with his sin.

(H. E. Stone.)

1. Are there any who are ready to justify their enormities from the example of David? Who are saying to themselves, "If David, notwithstanding these enormous crimes, was a saint of God, and obtained pardon, I am safe?" Let such consider his habitual conduct, his splendid virtues, and his deep repentance. In examining his habitual conduct, we behold a heart devoted to God. He fell into acts of the greatest wickedness; but these were not permanent, but diametrically opposite to his general walk and conversation. Justice requires also that we should contrast his murder and adultery with the splendid actions of his life. "David," says the sacred historian (1 Kings 15:5) "did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite." Think of his confidence in God; of his trust in the everlasting covenant; of the magnanimity and clemency that he so often displayed; of his zeal for the glory of God; of his humility; of his acquiescence in the severest dispensations of providence; of the pious emotions which glow in his psalms, and were felt in his heart; and after taking this general review of his life, say if there are many who from the bed of death can look back to more numerous or more splendid monuments of piety and virtue. Consider, too, the depth of his repentance. Behold him prostrate in the dust, dissolved in tears, pleading for the life of his soul; looking back with unutterable anguish to his conduce; bearing the agonised remembrance of it to the grave; never palliating his crimes; fleeing for pardon to unmerited grace.

2. This subject teaches us that one sin gradually leads us to another; that he who enters upon a criminal course knows not where he shall stop in his course; that he who indulges impetuous passions and inordinate appetites will shortly be deprived of the power of saying to them, "Hitherto shall ye come and no farther;" and that, therefore, our only safety is to be found in resisting the first approaches to crime, and "abstaining from all appearance of evil." Oppose, then, the beginnings of evil; beware of cherishing one sinful thought; you know not to what lengths of guilt and shame it may carry you; you cannot tell where its destructive consequences will end.

3. This subject addresses those who, like David, have departed from the ways of the Lord; have violated their engagements; have wounded their consciences; have grieved the Spirit of God and His saints. There is a sacrifice which has sufficient virtue to expiate all your accumulated guilt. By the application of the blood of Jesus, and the communication of his Spirit, you shall obtain the restoration of peace with God, and strength to serve Him in time to come; like David and like Peter recovered from your falls, you shall again participate of his favour and love.

4. In reviewing this history, we are naturally led to ask, Why did Providence permit this shameful fall in David? or, to extend the question, Why does God allow sin to remain, and sometimes to break out forcibly in his regenerate children? This question cannot easily be answered. It is not for want of power to prevent it; for He could perfectly sanctify them. It is not for want of hatred to their sin; it appears as odious, more odious in them than in others. It is not for want of love to them; he regards them as his friends and his children. Why, then, does he not render them immaculately holy? The following are, perhaps, some of the reasons of this dispensation. These do not at all justify the offender, though they vindicate the providence of God, and show its omnipotence in educing good from evil itself.(1) By them, the grace of God, in justification, is illustriously, and will be eternally magnified.(2) They are thus taught the depth of that iniquity which is in them, and rendered humble and dependent.(3) Thus they are taught to value more dearly the advocacy and intercession of the Lord Jesus.(4) The remembrance of the anguish of soul which they endured before God restored unto them the joy of His salvation; the recollection of "the wormwood and the gall" inspires them with additional fear of sin, and makes them more studious to mortify it. They tremble at the disease they have already felt, and walk in holy fear.(5) They are thus, by the wonderful providence of God, fitted for service. "When thou art converted," says Christ to Peter, after predicting his fall, "strengthen thy brethren." By the bitter experience of the power of sin they can admonish others against it.(6) The sins of believers make them tong for heaven. They are made ready to drop this body of flesh if with it they may drop the body of sin and death. "They groan, being burdened," and sigh for that land of perfect holiness, where they shall no longer offend their God.

(H. Kollock, D. D.)

1. The indulgence of the flesh in a little thing led to indulgence in a greater. (Romans 13:12-14; Romans 8:12, 13; Galatians 5:16.)

2. One sin leads to another, or requires another to cover it.

3. See the hardening effect of sin! The tender-hearted David becomes a monster of cruelty! (Read, after verse 26, 12:26 to end.)

4. The degradation of sin! Joab taken into counsel.

5. The Lord's unseen contemplation of man's actions. (Verse 27. Hebrews 4:13; Proverbs 15:11.) I, THE GREAT ONUS OF THE CRIME. For Christians the terrible ingredient of wilful sin is this: They crucify Christ afresh. They cause His name to be blasphemed. (Romans 2:24.) This makes our responsibility; hence 1 Peter 2:12; 2 Corinthians 6:3.

II. DAVID'S REPENTANCE. Notice immediate confession on conviction of his sin. His confession brief, heartfelt, going to the root of the matter.

(R. E. Faulkner.)

2. A year had passed away since David's fall. He had returned to Jerusalem in triumph. The dead Uriah was probably forgotten. The child of guilt was burn, and loved by David with a passionate tenderness. .The dreadful story, however, was not, we maybe quite certain, all forgotten by the king himself. However much the commission of the crimes of adultery and murder had injured or blinded his conscience — as wilful sin always does — still, "the man after God's own heart," the man who had shown through many temptations "an honest and good heart," the man who had loved and trusted God so faithfully, could not have rested quite at his ease under the terrible memory that he had allowed base passion to conquer his better self.

3. God was looking in mercy upon His servant, and Nathan was sent to him to bring him to the fulness of a sincere repentance, and to restore trim to peace with God. Nathan did his duty fearlessly and completely. Whatever sorrows there are and must be to penitents who have deeply fallen, still "God is the God of comfort," and He comforted David. Bathsheba was now his wife. Another child was born to them and David — with the sense of restored peace with God — called him Solomon, "the peaceful."

(W. J. Knox Little, M. A.)

I. REMARKS UPON THE CONCOMITANT CIRCUMSTANCES ARE: —

1. The time of David's adultery. This has a three-fold description, as(1) The time of the year, at springtime;(2) The time of war, when David had renewed his war against the Ammonites; and(3) The time of the day, in an eventide (ver. 1, 2.) To which may be added(4) The time of David's age and reign. Common computation makes it David's seventh year, the forty-ninth of his age, and the nineteenth of his reign. But learned Dr. Lightfoot computes it to be the twenty-sixth of his reign and so the fifty-sixth of his age, seeing he was thirty years old when he began his reign in Hebron, being in the tenth year of Samuel.

2. The place of David's sin: it was his own palace where he was indulging himself to ease and pleasure, when he should have been fighting the Lord's battles in the field with his army against the Ammonites. While he kept abroad in the wars in his own person he was safe enough. It was at evening tide when David should have been at his devotion, as had been his custom (Psalm 55:17), seeing he would not be in the field to fight.

3. Upon the third circumstance, the person, the sight whereof was the occasion of David's soul fall. She is described here divers ways:(1) A woman washing herself, to wit, from her legal uncleanness (Leviticus 15:19; Leviticus 18:19.) Possibly some window was carelessly left open for air in her chamber, that was near the palace royal, where she could espie no beholder; but lust, being quick sighted, lustful David espied her through the casement that then was casually or carelessly left open.(2) "Very beautiful to behold." This was a strong bait to David, who had been indulging himself with some excess of eating and drinking.(3) She is described by her name, as well as by her beauty (ver. 3.) David enquired after her, who she was, when he should rather have reproved himself for looking and lusting after a forbidden object; more especially when he found she was a daughter to one and a wife to another of his famous worthies (2 Samuel 23:34, 39.)(4) "David sent messengers to fetch her." Unbridled lust, like the wild vine, will ramble over the hedge.(5) She came from her own house into his palace, not by force but by persuasion, pretending only to speak with her; but she came not so well fortified for resisting a temptation as she should.

II. Let us turn aside with Moses to take a LITTLE PROSPECT OF THIS, A GREAT WONDER,

1. As to David, "A man after God's own heart," yet his unbridled lust had metamorphosed him into a beast, He might now well say in the words of Asaph, "So foolish was I and ignorant, and even as a beast before Thee." (Psalm 73:23.) This teacheth us, that the best of men are but men at the best; and who art thou, O man, that thinkst thou art safe and secure enough from acts Of sin? "Surely thou knowest not the plague of thine own heart" (1 Kings 8:38.)

2. As to Bathsheba, some do say she was not free from faultiness upon several accounts.(1) That she bathed herself in her garden, so nigh to the King's court, for Uriah, being one of David's worthies, had his house assigned him near to the royal palace.(2) That she so willingly came with the first messenger without any jealousy of a snare to her, after such too open a washing herself in the view of the court.(3) That she so easily yielded unto David's tempting her without any reluctancy, forgetting her fidelity to her honourable husband, choosing rather to be a base harlot to a king than an honest wife to a good subject.

III. DAVID'S ADDING MURDER TO HIS ADULTERY, INSTEAD OF REPENTING FOR HIS SIN.

1. First, David's contrivement to congeal his sin from the eyes of men, in the meantime not regarding the all-seeing eye of God, etc.(1) He sends for Uriah, that he, returning home and lying with his wife, might believe this now begotten child, to be of his own begetting.(2) The discourse betwixt David and Uriah upon his return at royal summons (v. 7.)(3) David deals still with Uriah while sober, and dissemblingly gives him an amicable dismission (v. 8) bidding him go home and refresh thyself after thy travail, "and rejoice with the wife of thy youth" (Proverbs 5:18.) Not doubting but he would converse with his wife, and so cover both their sin and their shame.(4) David's expostulation with Uriah, occasioned by his not embracing the King's leave to go to his house, but sleeping all night, among the king's guard (v. 9.)(5) Uriah still holds his resolution (v. 11) neither the dignity of the king (saith Peter Martyr) nor the beauty and importunity of his wife could reclaim him from his refractory humour. Thus the providence of God did counter-work all the policies and projects of David, who designed all along to have his sin concealed, when the most wise God will have it revealed; and lest the king should think it was too saucy a sullenness in a subject to be thus peremptory he renders a most pregnant reason for so persisting in his resolve.(6) Still David, instead of repenting, proceeds from bad to worse (vers. 12, 13), when he found himself crossed in his former contrivances with Uriah while sober, he will try one trick more in making Uriah drunk, that when intoxicated he might forget his oath and lie with his wife, putting off all his former austerity.

2. The last, but worst link of that doleful chain of David's lust: So far was David still from repenting of his sin that, seeing his craft (for concealing his adultery he failed him in all the other fair means he contrived, now) resolveth upon cruelty in the use of foul methods to get this good Uriah cut off insensibly, and so to cover his adultery with murder, that so he might not live to accuse the adulteress.(1) In order hereunto he wrote a letter to Joab (v. 14), not with black but rather with blood, and Uriah must carry this sword to Joab for the cutting of his own throat.(2) Uriah must be set in the hottest battle, and then lurched (v 15). Joab must believe this most excellent person had some way deserved death, and he must be the executioner; yet could he not be ignorant of the law, that no criminals should die without two or three witnesses against them; therefore, he was too obsequious in obeying so tyrannical a command (v. 16, 17), but Joab haply hoped thereby to ingratiate himself with David for the murder of Abner, which he had not yet answered, for now David was like to be no less guilty than himself. Right or wrong, he'll please the king.(3) Tidings hereof are dictated by Joab in what order the messenger must tell David (v. 18, 19), and if the king object any rashness in the enterprise, he must answer "Uriah is slain also," and that answers all objections.(4) David was pleased, saying "Let not Joab be displeased," etc. (v. 25), where he smootheth up his general, slights the slaughter of so many gallant men, and deeply dissembleth with the messenger, that so neither his bloody command nor Joab's fawning obedience might be discovered to him. David had, been still striving against the stream in the use of fair means, and none would do to his content; but, having found success in this foul policy, oh how he hugs himself under hardness of heart.(5) Bathsheba mourned for the death of her husband (v. 26), and no doubt it was a feigned and a merry mourning. She was inwardly pleased, both as freed from fear of his rage and punishment of an adulteress, and: as hoping now to be made a queen. Had she been sensible of her sin (afterwards doubtless she was) she would have mourned like a dove, as Queen Huzzah did (Nahum 2:7.) But after seven days of mourning (saith Josephus) the ordinary time (Genesis 50:10, 1 Samuel 31:13) the adulterer married the adulteress; and probably more haste might be made here. that she might be thought to be with child by David after they were married (v. 27.) "But the thing that David had (lone displeased the Lord," which was not simply his marrying of her, for that is nowhere forbidden in Scripture, but for his alluring her to adultery, and for murdering her husband after it.

(C. Ness.)

(Homiletic Review.)

(H. W. Beecher.)

(E. P. Thwing.)

( C. H. Spurgeon.)

(A. Maclaren, D.D.)

(J. Trapp.)

     4482   millstones

2 Samuel 11:1-27

     5714   men

2 Samuel 11:3-24

     5305   empires

How those are to be Admonished with whom Everything Succeeds According to their Wish, and those with whom Nothing Does.
(Admonition 27.) Differently to be admonished are those who prosper in what they desire in temporal matters, and those who covet indeed the things that are of this world, but yet are wearied with the labour of adversity. For those who prosper in what they desire in temporal matters are to be admonished, when all things answer to their wishes, lest, through fixing their heart on what is given, they neglect to seek the giver; lest they love their pilgrimage instead of their country; lest they turn …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

The Sixth Commandment
Thou shalt not kill.' Exod 20: 13. In this commandment is a sin forbidden, which is murder, Thou shalt not kill,' and a duty implied, which is, to preserve our own life, and the life of others. The sin forbidden is murder: Thou shalt not kill.' Here two things are to be understood, the not injuring another, nor ourselves. I. The not injuring another. [1] We must not injure another in his name. A good name is a precious balsam.' It is a great cruelty to murder a man in his name. We injure others in …
Thomas Watson—The Ten Commandments

Samuel
Alike from the literary and the historical point of view, the book[1] of Samuel stands midway between the book of Judges and the book of Kings. As we have already seen, the Deuteronomic book of Judges in all probability ran into Samuel and ended in ch. xii.; while the story of David, begun in Samuel, embraces the first two chapters of the first book of Kings. The book of Samuel is not very happily named, as much of it is devoted to Saul and the greater part to David; yet it is not altogether inappropriate, …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament