IX. DAVID AND NATHAN THE PROPHET

We are now arrived at another incident in the history of David—for I must still call the attention of my readers to the memoirs of that extraordinary person, as exhibiting marks of truth and reality, numerous, perhaps, beyond those which any other character of the same antiquity presents—an incident which has been accounted, and most justly accounted, the reproach of his life. The province which I have marked out for myself in this work is the evidence for the veracity of the sacred historians, and not the interpretation of the moral difficulties which the history itself may sometimes involve. In the present instance, however, the very coincidence which establishes the trustworthiness of the history, may serve also to remove some stumbling-blocks out of the sceptic’s path, and vindicate the ways of God to man.

That the man after God’s own heart should have so fallen from his high estate, as to become the adulterer and the assassin, has been ever urged with great effect by unbelievers; and this very consequence of David’s sin was foreseen and foretold by Nathan the prophet, when he approached the King, bearing with him the rebuke of God on his tongue, and saying, “By this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of God to blaspheme.” Such has indeed been its effect, from the day when it was first done unto this day, and such probably will its effect continue to be unto the end of time. David’s transgression, committed almost three thousand years ago, sheds, in some sort, an evil influence on the cause of David’s God, even now. So wide-wasting is the mischief which flows from the lapse of a righteous man; so great the darkness becomes, when the light that is amongst us is darkness! But was David the man after God’s own heart here? It were blasphemy to suppose it. That the sin of David was fulfilling some righteous judgment of God against Uriah and his house, I doubt not—for God often makes his enemies his instruments, and without sanctifying the means, strikes out of them good. Still a sin it was, great and grievous, offensive to that God to whom the blood of Uriah cried from the ground. And this the Almighty proclaimed even more loudly, perhaps, by suffering David to live, than if, in the sudden burst of his instant displeasure, He had slain him. For, at the period when the King of Israel fell under this sad temptation, he was at the very height of his glory and his strength. The kingdom of Israel had never so flourished before; it was the first of the nations. He had thoroughly subdued the Philistines, that mighty people, who in his youth had compelled all the Israelites to come down to their quarters, even to sharpen their mattocks, so rigid was the exercise of their rule. He had smitten the Moabites, on the other side Jordan, once themselves the oppressors of Israel, making them tributaries. He had subdued the Edomites, a race that delighted in war, and had stationed his troops throughout all their territories. He had possessed himself of the independent kingdom of the Syrians, and garrisoned Damascus their capital. He had extended his frontier eastward to the Euphrates [2 Sam. 8.] , though never perhaps beyond it [See Ezra 6:20.] , and he was on the point of reducing the Ammonites, whose city, Rabbah, his generals were besieging; and thus, the whole of the Promised Land, with the exception of the small state of Tyre, which the Israelites never appear to have conquered, was now his own. Prosperity, perhaps, had blinded his eyes, and hardened his heart. The treasures which he had amassed, and the ease which he had fought for and won, had made him luxurious; for now it was, that the once innocent son of Jesse the Bethlehemite,—he who had been taken from the sheep-folds because an excellent spirit was in him, and who had hitherto prospered in all that he had set his hand unto,—it was now that that man was tempted and fell. And now mark the remainder of his days—God eventually forgave him, for he repented him (as his penitential psalms still most affectingly attest), in the bitterness and anguish of his soul; but God dried up all the sources of his earthly blessings thenceforward for ever. With this sin the sorrow of his life began, and the curse which the prophet denounced against him, sat heavy on his spirit to the last; a curse—and I beg attention to this—which has a peculiar reference to the nature of his crime; as though upon this offence all his future miseries and misfortunes were to turn; as though he was only spared from the avenger’s violent hand to be made a spectacle of righteous suffering to the world. He had committed murder by the edge of the sword, and therefore the sword was never to depart from his house. He had despised the commandment of the Lord (so Nathan expressly says), and taken the wife of another to be his wife; therefore were his own wives to be taken from him, and given to his neighbour in turn. The complexion, therefore, of his remaining years, was set by this one fatal deed of darkness (let none think or say that it was lightly regarded by the Almighty), and having become the man of blood, of blood he was to drink deep; and having become the man of lust, by that same baneful passion in others was he himself to be scourged for ever. Now the manner in which these tremendous threats are fulfilled is very remarkable; for it is done by way of natural consequence of the sin itself; a dispensation which I have not seen developed as it deserves to be, though the facts of the history furnish very striking materials for the purpose. And herein lies the coincidence, to which the remarks I have hitherto been making are a needful prologue.

By the rebellion of Absalom it was that these menaces of the Almighty Judge of all the earth were accomplished with a fearful fidelity.

Absalom was able to draw after him the hearts of all the people as one man. And what was it that armed him with this moral strength? What was it that gave him the means of unseating his father in the affections of a loyal people?—the king whom they had so greatly loved—who had raised the name of Israel to a pitch of gloW never attained unto before—whose praises had been sung by the mothers and maidens of Israel, as the champion to whom none other was like? How could he steal away the hearts of the people from such a man, with so little effort, and apparently with so little reason? I believe that this very sin of David was made the engine by which his throne was shaken; for I observe that the chief instrument in the conspiracy was Ahithophel. No sooner has Absalom determined upon his daring deed, than he looks to Ahithophel for help. He appears, for some reason or other not mentioned, to have quite reckoned upon him as well-affected to his cause, as ready to join him in it heart and hand; and he did not find himself mistaken. “Absalom,” I read [2 Sam. 15:12.] , “sent for Ahithophel the Gilonite, David’s counsellor, from his city, even from Giloh, while he offered sacrifices. And the conspiracy” (it is forthwith added, as though Ahithophel was a host in himself) “was strong; for the people increased continually with Absalom.” David, upon this, takes alarm, and makes it the subject of his earnest prayer to God, that “he would turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness.” Nor is this to be wondered at, when we are told in another place that “the counsel of Ahithophel, which he counselled in those days, was as if a man had enquired at the oracle of God: so was all the counsel of Ahithophel both with David and with Absalom.” [2 Sam. 16:23] He therefore was the sinews of Absalom’s cause. Of his character, and the influence which he possessed over the people, Absalom availed himself, both to sink the spirits of David’s party, and to inspire his own with confidence, for all men counted Ahithophel to be as a prophet. But independently of the weight of his public reputation, it is probable that certain private wrongs of his own (of which I have now to speak) at once prepared him for accepting Absalom’s rebellious overtures with alacrity, and caused him to find still greater favour in the eyes of the people, as being an injured man, whom it was fit that they should avenge of his adversary. For in the twenty-third chapter of the second Book of Samuel, I find in the catalogue of David’s guardsmen, thirty-seven in number, the name of “Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite” (v. 34). The epithet of Gilonite sufficiently identifies this Ahithophel with the conspirator of the same name. One, therefore, of the thirty-seven officers about David’s person, was a son of the future conspirator against his throne. But, in this same catalogue, I also meet with the name of Uriah the Hittite (v. 39). Eliam, therefore, and Uriah must have been thrown much together, being both of the same rank, and being each one of the thirty-seven officers of the King’s guard. Now, from the eleventh chapter of the second Book of Samuel, I learn that Uriah the Hittite had for his wife Bath-sheba, the daughter of one Eliam (v. 3). I look upon it, therefore, to be so probable, as almost to amount to certainty, that this was the same Eliam as before, and that Uriah (as was very natural, considering the necessary intercourse of the parties) had married the daughter of his brother officer, and accordingly the grand-daughter of Ahithophel. I feel that I now have the key to the conduct of this leading conspirator; the sage and prudent friend of David converted, by some means or other, into his deadly foe—for I now perceive, that when David murdered Uriah, he murdered Ahithophel’s grandson by marriage, and when he corrupted Bath-sheba, he corrupted his grand-daughter by blood. Well then, after this disaster and dishonour of his house, might revenge rankle in the heart of Ahithophel! Well might Absalom know that nothing but a fit opportunity was wanted by him, that he might give it vent, and spend his treasured wrath upon the head of David his wrong-doer! Well might he approach him with confidence, and impart to him his treason, as a man who would welcome the news, and be his present and powerful fellow-worker! Well might the people, who, upon an appeal like this, seldom fail to follow the dictates of their better feelings, and to stand manfully by the injured, find their allegiance to a throne defiled with adultery and blood, relaxed, and their loyalty transferred to the rebel’s side! And the terms in which Shimei reproaches the King, when he follows after him to Bahurim, casting stones at him, not improbably as expressive of the legal punishment of the adulterer, “Come out, come out, thou bloody man, and thou man of Belial;” [2 Sam. 16:7.] and the meekness moreover with which David bows to the reproach, accepting it as a merited chastisement from God, “So let him curse, because the Lord hath said unto him, Curse David” (v. 10); are minute incidents which testify to the same fact—to the popular voice now lifted up against David, and to the merited cause thereof. Well might he find his heart sink within him, when he heard that his ancient counsellor had joined the ranks of his enemies, and when he knew but too well what reason he had given him for turning his arms against himself in that unmitigated and inextinguishable thirst for vengeance which is sweet, however utterly unjustifiable, to all men so deeply injured, and sweetest of all to the children of the East! And in the very first word of exhortation which Ahithophel suggests to Absalom, I detect, or think I detect, the wounded spirit of the man seizing the earliest moment for inflicting a punishment upon his enemy, of a kind that should not only be bitter, but appropriate, the eye for the eye; and when Absalom said, “Give counsel among you what we shall do,” and Ahithophel answered, “Go in unto thy father’s concubines which he hath left to keep the house,” [2 Sam. 16:21.] he was not only moved by the desire that the rebellious son should stand fairly committed to his rebellion by an unpardonable outrage against the majesty of an eastern monarch, but by the desire also to make David taste the bitterness of that cup which he had caused others to drink, and to receive the very measure which he had himself meted withal. And so it came to pass, that Absalom followed his counsel, and they spread for him the incestuous tent, we read, on the top of the house, in the sight of all Israel [2 Sam. 16:22.] , on that very roof, it should seem, on which David at even-tide had walked, when he conceived this his great sin, upon which his life was to turn as upon a hinge [2 Sam. 11:2.] ; and so again it came to pass, and under circumstances of local identity and exposure which wear the aspect of strictly judicial reprisals, that that which he had done secretly (his abduction of another man’s wife) God did for him, and more also, as He said He would, before all Israel, and before the sun [2 Sam. 12:12.] .

Thus, having once discovered by the apposition of many passages, that a relation subsisted between Ahithophel and Uriah, a fact which the sacred historian is so far from dwelling upon, that he barely supplies us with the means to establish it at all, we see in the circumstances of the conspiracy, the natural recoil of David’s sin; and in his punishment, retributive as it is, so strictly retributive, that it must have stricken his conscience as a judgment, even had there been no warning voice concerning it, the accomplishment, by means the most easy and unconstrained, of all that Nathan had uttered, to the syllable.