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CHAPTER 19 : Siege of Rabbah - David's great Sin - Death of Uriah -
Taking of Rabbah - David's seeming Prosperity - God's Message
through Nathan - David's Repentance - The Child of Bathsheba dies -
Birth of Solomon. (2 SAMUEL 11, 12)
THERE is one marked peculiarity about the history of the most prominent Biblical
personages, of which the humbling lesson should sink deep into our hearts. As we
follow their onward and upward progress, they seem at times almost to pass beyond
our reach, as if they had not been compassed with the same infirmities as we, and
their life of faith were so far removed as scarcely to serve as an example to us. Such
thoughts are terribly rebuked by the history of their sudden falls, which shed a lurid
light on the night side of their character -showing us also, on the one hand, through
what inward struggles they must have passed, and, on the other, how Divine grace
alone had supported and given them the victory in their many untold contests. But
more than that, we find this specially exhibited just as these heroes of faith attain, so
to speak, the spiritual climax of their life, as if the more clearly to set it forth from
the eminence which they had reached. Accordingly, the climax of their history often
also marks the commencement of their decline. It was so in the case of Moses and of
Aaron, in that of David,^299 and of Elijah. But there is one exception to this - or rather
we should say, one history to which the opposite of this remark applies: that of our
Blessed Lord and Savior. The climax in the history of His life among men was on
the Mount of Transfiguration; and though what followed marks His descent into the
valley of humiliation, even to the bitter end, yet the glory around Him only grew
brighter and brighter to the Resurrection morning.
Once more spring-time had come, when the war against the Ammonites could be
resumed. For hitherto only their auxiliaries had been crushed. The importance
attached to the expedition may be judged from the circumstance that the ark of God
now accompanied the army of Israel (2 Samuel 11:11). Again success attended
David. His army, having in its advance laid waste every town, appeared before
Rabbah, the strong capital of Ammon. Here was the last stand which the enemy
could make - or, indeed, so far as man could judge, it was the last stand of David's
last enemy. Henceforth all would be prosperity and triumph! It was in the
intoxication of hitherto unbroken success, on the dangerous height of absolute and
unquestioned power, that the giddiness seized David which brought him to his fall. It
is needless to go over the sad, sickening details of his sin - how he was literally
"drawn away of his lust, and enticed;" and how when lust had conceived it brought
forth sin - and then sin, when it was finished, brought forth death (James 1:14, 15).
The heart sinks as we watch his rapid downward course - the sin, the attempt to
conceal it by enticing Uriah, whose suspicions appear to have been aroused, and
(^)