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Order of events:

1. Report of Uriah's death (vers. 22-25).

2. Bathsheba mourns (seven days, 1 Samuel 31:13) for her husband (ver. 26), being probably unacquainted with the manner in which it was brought about.

3. David makes her his wife.

4. Joab takes Rabbah, except the citadel (2 Samuel 12:26).

5. David, on receiving Joab's message, goes to Rabbah and conquers the city (2 Samuel 12:27-31).

6. David and all the people return to Jerusalem.

7. Bathsheba bears a son (ver. 27).

"When I kept silence my bones waxed old
Whilst I continually groaned;
For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me:
My moisture was turned into the drought of summer."

(Psalm 32:3, 4.) The life of David has an outward and an inward aspect: the one described in the history, the other by himself in his psalms; each the necessary complement of the other. They are, in general, closely connected and correspond, the outward being the expression of the inward, and explained by it. But sometimes they appear at variance, and in some respects present a melancholy contrast; as in the period that followed his transgression. He had succeeded in hiding it from public view; but he could not hide it altogether from himself. Consider concealment of sin in relation to -

I. THE OUTWARD LIFE. Many a man carries in his breast a guilty secret, unsuspected by others. He may be the object of their admiration and envy, and distinguished (as David was) by:

1. Apparent sincerity in public and in private life. He judges offenders in the gate, or receives news (from the battlefield) with words of resignation or encouragement (ver. 25). "Alas! how often do men hide baseness and satisfaction at successful plotting under the commonplace of resignation to the inevitable, of submission to the conditions of existence!" He goes to the house of God (2 Samuel 7:8), "returns to bless his household" (2 Samuel 6:20), and maintains the form of private devotion. Yet he is inwardly "like the troubled sea when it cannot rest," etc. (Isaiah 57:20).

2. Restless activity (2 Samuel 12:29), which, though it appear to be a display of admirable energy, is really pursued as a welcome diversion from disquieting thoughts. "The enterprise promised an opportunity of escaping from himself; and he probably went thither in the maddest of all attempts, that, namely, of outrunning a guilty conscience" (W.M. Taylor).

3. Earthly prosperity. "And he took the king's crown," etc. (2 Samuel 12:30). In this there was, probably, something of vain glory (1 John 2:16). It was the culmination of his victories over the heathen. But the honour of wearing the crown of "their king" (or Milcom, Moloch) was a poor compensation for the dishonour he had done to his own, and the loss of uprightness of heart; his triumph over idolatry a miserable set off against his overthrow by Satan.

4. Unusual severity. (2 Samuel 12:31.) The effect of sin is to harden the heart.

"I waive the quantum o' the sin,
The hazard of concealing;
But och! it hardens a' within,
And petrifies the feeling!"

(Burns) It also perverts the judgment. He who is wanting in a due sense of his own sinfulness is apt to be a severe judge of others (2 Samuel 12:5; Matthew 18:28; Matthew 21:41; Romans 2:21). A conscience ill at ease makes the temper sullen and irritable; and a repressed feeling of justice in relation to a man himself sometimes finds relief in the infliction of cruel vengeance on other men. "An evil conscience is the concealed root of bitterness from which spring a thousand poisonous plants, to shed their baleful influence upon the possessor and upon society at large" (McCosh).

II. THE INWARD LIFE. The experience of David was marked by:

1. Obstinate silence. (Psalm 32:3.) He not only sought to conceal his transgression from men, but also sullenly refused to admit "the iniquity of his sin" to himself, or acknowledge it before God. The impulse to confession in such a man must have been strong; but he struggled against it with all his might (Psalm 32:9), as others have done.

2. Self-deceiving guile. "The deceit of the impenitent heart consists in its seeking to excuse and justify itself despite the condemnation of conscience, while it obtains no relief from the feeling of guilt, but rather brings about a sharper reaction of conscience, and increases the pains that come from the conflict of mutually accusing and excusing thoughts" (Erdmann). "The roots of this deceit, which makes its appearance immediately after a fall into sin, are pride, lack of trust in God, and love of sin" (Hengstenberg).

3. Spiritual deprivation. For during these long, weary months of silence the light of God's countenance was hidden, the joy of his salvation lost (Psalm 51:8, 12). "His harp was out of tune, and his soul like a tree in winter, with the life in the root only" (Matthew Henry). "We are not to conceive of him as one who had quite fallen, nor as one spiritually dead, but as sick unto death. It is certain that he had not quite lost all desire after God, that he had not entirely given up prayer; doubtless there were still many fruits of faith perceptible in him; but his soul was checked in its flight toward God, a curse rested upon him, which made solitary communion with the Divine Being for any length of time intolerable, and moved him to seek distractions in order to escape the torment of conscience and keep it from attaining to full life."

4. Inexpressible misery; consisting of "the burden of the heart weighing on itself, the burden of a secret, the sense of hypocrisy, the knowledge of inward depravity, while all without looks pure as snow to men" (F.W. Robertson); the remembrance of sin that cannot be forgotten (Psalm 51:3), the remorse of conscience that cannot be quieted, the sense of Divine displeasure, the dread of approaching woes (Psalm 51:11); continuing without cessation; consuming the vital energies, and exhausting the physical strength (Psalm 38:6). "Whithersoever the sinner may turn himself, or however he may be mentally affected, his malady is in no degree lightened nor his welfare in any degree promoted until he is restored to God" (Calvin, in Psalm 32.). "I will reprove thee" etc. (Psalm 50:21). Although for a season concealed, it will be in due time revealed (Matthew 10:26). "Not only was the fruit of the sin to be first of all brought to light (ver. 27), and the hardened sinner to be deprived of the possibility of either denying or concealing his crimes; God would first of all break his unbroken heart by the torture of his own conscience, and prepare it to feel the reproaches of the prophet .... Nathan's reproof could not possibly have berne its saving fruit if David had been still living in utter blindness as to the character of his sin at the time the prophet went to him" (Keil). "No language ever described so vividly the sense of a weight at the heart - a weight that cannot be uplifted; and it was the weight of God's own presence, of that presence which he had once spoken of as the fulness of joy. With this oppression, like that of the air before the thunderstorm, came the drying up of all the moisture and freshness of life, the parching heat of fever. Did the Prophet Nathan bring all this to his consciousness? No, surely. The Prophet Nathan came at the appointed time to tell him in clear words, by a living instance, that which he had been hearing in muttered accents within his heart for months before. He came to tell him that the God of righteousness and mercy, who cared for Uriah, the poor man with the single ewe lamb, was calling him, the king, to account for an act of unrighteousness and unmercifulness. Nathan brought him to face steadily the light at which he had been winking, and to own that the light was good, that it was the darkness which was horrible and hateful, so that he might turn to the light and crave that it should once more penetrate into the depths of his being, and take possession of him" (Maurice). - D.

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KJV: So the messenger went, and came and shewed David all that Joab had sent him for.

WEB: So the messenger went, and came and showed David all that Joab had sent him for.