II SAMUEL 12:1-5: NATHAN'S PARABLE TO KING DAVID

This story is framed by two incidents in which Bathsheba mourns: first for her husband Uriah (11:26) and lastly for her dead son (12:24). It is also bracketed by two of the rare instances of God's direct intervention in the combined kingdom, at 11:27 (“But the thing which David had done displeased God and he sent Nathan.”) and 12:24 (“God loved Solomon and sent Nathan.”)

Dale Davis demonstrates that the parable is in center of chapters 11-12:

    David sends Joab against Ammon (2 Sam. 11:1)

        Sexual relations with Bathsheba –  conception (11:2-5)

            Manipulating Uriah (11:6-13)

                David's successful scheme (11:14-27)

                    Nathan's parable (12:1-7a)

                Yahweh's severe word (12:7b-12a)

            Submitting to God (12:12b-23)

        Marital relations with Bathsheba – birth (12:24-25)

    Joab summons David against Ammon (12:26-31)

Two interesting facts relating to this incident: (1) the author of Chronicles omits David's sin with Bathsheba and his confrontation by Nathan entirely from his account and (2) there is a strong echo of this story in Shakespeare's Hamlet, where the hero stages a play to try to convict his uncle the king who has killed Hamlet's father in order to marry his wife. “The play's the thing to catch the conscience of the king.”

v. 1 In the previous chapter, everyone “sends,” including David, Joab and Bathsheba. The word appears 12x. Now in v. 1 it is God's turn to send. (Dale Davis)

v. 3 The three action -- eat, drink, and lie down -- are used in the same order by Uriah in 11:11. (Tsumura)

God commutes the death penalty for David's sin, but an innocent party will take his place (his infant son = a type of Jesus). Compare David's immediate remorse with the reaction of the Pharisees when Jesus told parables against them. They sought to kill him. This is the closest OT parable resembling Jesus' parables.

v. 4a Notice that in this parable, Nathan has added a detail about a guest coming to eat, which has absolutely no correspondence to the real life happening he is alluding to. This detail is just there to flesh out the story line and should warn us not to read too much into the peripheral details of a parable.

v. 4b There is an old Bedouin custom that a tribe member can take a sheep or goat from his neighbor's flock if an unexpected guest arrives for dinner. There are two qualifications, however: (1) the person must have no animals of his own to kill and (2) it specifically excludes the taking of any pet animals. (McCarter)

v. 5 The solemn oath David uses shows how intensely involved David is in the story. Once in a Sunday school class I staged a short improvised play that concerned a pastor who was seen leaving a bar with a married woman from the congregation. I was one of the three actors and so I could see the reaction of the class members, and some of them were literally on the edge of their seat, they were so caught up in the action. Joyce Baldwin psychoanalyzes David's response by saying, “Nathan provides him with a projection screen...David attempts to rid himself of his guilty conscience by passing judgment on someone else, while subconsciously passing judgment on himself.”

McCarter: The Anchor Bible translation is “the man who did this is a fiend of hell!” This is his understanding of the Hebrew original (a son of death). That understanding would explain the apparent contradiction of the man being executed and then made to pay back what he had taken.

v. 6 Four-fold is the literal penalty for stealing a sheep (Exodus 22:1). Talmud: four-fold restitution has a parallel in the fate of David's other children: the deaths of three children and the disgrace of his daughter. By contrast, the Greek Septuagint translation says the penalty is to pay back seven-fold. Which one is right? seven-fold = completely.

vv. 7-9 Nathan concludes by saying, “Why have you despised the word of the LORD?”

v. 13 And David replies, “I have sinned against the LORD.” Compare this to David's total lack of remorse for taking Uriah's wife and then killing him. Somehow Nathan's parable convicts David of his sin. It certainly shows how powerful a tool parables are in sneaking in past our defenses.

It has been pointed out that during the incident with Bathsheba, David broke all of the last five commandments – those having to do with our relations with other people. But he was always very careful not to break the first tablet of the law involving God himself. For example, remember when he cut off a piece of Saul's clothing and had a twinge of conscience over the incident even though he could have easily killed Saul, Why? Because Saul was the man God picked, and therefore David was very scrupulous not to harm him. I think it took Nathan to get David to realize that the whole law was the Word of God, not just the first commandments and that he was dishonoring God just as much when he broke the second tablet of the law. That is why David could say in Psalm 51: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and I have done evil in your sight.”

Davis: “Nathan's strategy is nothing but the ingenuity of grace. His technique is the godly scheming of grace that goes around the end of our resistance and causes us to switch the floodlights on our own darkness.” Really, the only thing worse than God pointing out our sins to us is if he let us alone to suffer the natural consequences of our actions. This is what Paul says in Romans 1 happened to those who purposely sinned. Three times Paul says “God left them alone.”