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The king had listened in silence, like one staggering and stunned under the blows
that fell. But it was not sorrow unto death. Long before his own heart had told him
all his sin. And now that the Divine messenger had broken through what had hitherto
covered his feelings, the words of repentance sprang to his long-parched lips, as
under the rod of Moses the water from the riven rock in the thirsty wilderness. They
were not many words which he spoke, and in this also lies evidence of their depth
and genuineness (comp. Luke 18:13) - but in them he owned two realities: sin and
God. But to own them in their true meaning: sin as against God, and God as the Holy
One, and yet God as merciful and gracious - was to have returned to the way of
peace. Lower than this penitence could not descend; higher than this faith could not
rise. And God was Jehovah - and David's sin was put away.
Brief as this account reads, we are not to imagine that all this passed, and passed
away, in the short space of time it takes to tell it. Again we say: in this respect also
let the record be searched of the penitential Psalms, that Old Testament comment, as
it were, on the three days' and three nights' conflict, outlined in Romans 7:5-25, the
history of which is marked out by the words "blasphemer," "persecutor," "injurious,"
and "exceeding abundant grace" (1 Timothy 1:13-16). For, faith is indeed an act, and
immediate; and pardon also is an act, immediate and complete; but only the soul that
has passed through it knows the terrible reality of a personal sense of sin, or the
wondrous surprise of the sunrise of grace.
Assuredly it was so in the case of David. But the sting of that wound could not be
immediately removed. The child who was the offspring of his sin must die: for
David's own sake, that he might not enjoy the fruit of sin; because he had given
occasion for men to blaspheme, and that they might no longer have such occasion;
and because Jehovah was God. And straightway the child sickened unto death. It
was right that David should keenly feel the sufferings of the helpless innocent child;
right that he should fast and pray for it without ceasing; right even that to the last he
should hope against hope that this, the seemingly heaviest punishment of his guilt,
might be remitted. We can understand how all the more dearly he loved his child;
how he lay on the ground night and day, and refused to rise or be comforted of man's
comforts. We can also understand - however little his servants might - how, when it
was all over, he rose of his own accord, changed his apparel, went to worship in the
house of Jehovah, and then returned to his own household: for, if the heavy stroke
had not been averted, but had fallen - his child was not gone, only gone before. And
once more there came peace to David's soul. Bathsheba was now truly and before
God his wife. Another child gladdened their hearts. David named him, symbolically
and prophetically, Solomon, "the peaceful:" the seal, the pledge, and the promise of
peace. But God called him, and he was "Jedidiah," the Jehovah-loved. Once more,
then, the sunshine of God's favor had fallen upon David's household - yet was it,
(^)