Scripture Daily

Context No. 588 of 4322 · 2 Samuel

Context · Reflection

2 Samuel 11:11-15: in context

11Uriah said to David, “The ark, Israel, and Judah, are staying in tents; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open field. Shall I then go into my house to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing!” 12David said to Uriah, “Stay here today also, and tomorrow I will let you depart.” So Uriah stayed in Jerusalem that day and the next day. 13When David had called him, he ate and drank before him; and he made him drunk. At evening, he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but didn’t go down to his house. 14In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. 15He wrote in the letter, saying, “Send Uriah to the forefront of the hottest battle, and retreat from him, that he may be struck and die.”

David has already committed adultery with Bathsheba and learned she is pregnant, and now he is frantically trying to cover it. He recalls her husband Uriah from the front, hoping Uriah will sleep with his wife and the child will be assumed his. But Uriah, a foreign soldier in Israel's army, displays an integrity that shames the king. While the ark and my comrades are camping in open fields, he says, how could I go home to eat and drink and lie with my wife? I will not do this thing. So the cover-up fails, and watch what David does next. He gets Uriah drunk, hoping that will loosen his resolve. When even that fails, David writes a letter, and has the loyal, honorable Uriah carry his own death warrant back to the front: put him where the fighting is fiercest, then pull back, so he will be killed.

Trace the descent, because it is the whole point. It began with one sin, adultery. Rather than confess it, David tried to hide it, and hiding it required deception. When the deception failed, he escalated to manipulation, getting a good man drunk. When that failed, he escalated again, all the way to murder, and used the very integrity of his victim to accomplish it. Each refusal to simply come clean drove him one step further, until the man who would not repent of adultery was arranging an assassination. Sin unconfessed does not sit still; it metastasizes, demanding worse and worse to keep itself hidden. And beside David's collapse stands Uriah's plain integrity, throwing the king's corruption into unbearable relief.

That is a sober warning about the sins I try to cover rather than confess. The instinct, when I have done wrong, is to hide it, and hiding it almost never stays simple; it pulls me into the next compromise, and the next, each one worse than the sin I was protecting. David's road from adultery to murder was paved entirely with refusals to confess. Is there a sin I am covering rather than confessing, and do I see how the covering is quietly pulling me into worse than the thing I am hiding, when confession would stop the slide?

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