In the reports of spiritual and sexual abuse that occur with monotonous weekly regularity, there’s a disturbing recurrent trend. Leaders, so it’s far too often said, should be forgiven and swiftly restored to a public preaching and pastoral role—because King David was.
This idea glosses over the importance of genuine repentance and restitution towards those that have been harmed. Cheap grace doesn’t bring about reconciliation which is two-part—forgiveness and repentance. Rather it simply ensures that the consequences of the abuse—the blighted fruit that is ripening towards a poisoned harvest—is spread wider and further. God is not mocked, we reap what we sow—and for all David was forgiven, he did not avoid the devastation it was prophesied would befall his children because of his sin: rape, murder, rebellion, more rape, more killing, civil war.
Now I say ‘for all David was forgiven’ advisedly. Yes, in respect to the rape of Bathsheba (and I suggest rape rather than adultery because that’s what his children and concubines reaped) and also in respect to the murder of Uriah. He confessed and repented of those actions, but did he repent of his attitude? Was the self-centred arrogance behind his behaviour ever addressed? Was he ever truly reconciled with God, his family and his subjects? The witness of Scripture is against it.
Yet David is the dangerous idol of so much of Christendom today. We read his opinions and interpret them as God’s viewpoint, not as wishful human thinking.
Many years ago I broke eight bones in my foot in an accident while I was teaching. I was off work for ten weeks and when I got back I was told I’d have to wait a fortnight before my pay could be reinstated. I was duly patient but, by the time four fortnights had passed, I took to ringing up the pay office regularly for updates.
Then, suddenly, I could no longer get through. The line was blocked. Several more weeks went by and, in desperation, I asked the school registrar if there was another phone number for the pay office. He helpfully gave me the direct line. At least he thought he did. It was in fact the number for the pay office of ancillary staff, not teaching staff, but the obliging person at the other end immediately patched me through to the correct desk.
The moment I gave my name and asked about my pay status, then twelve weeks behind, the verbal abuse began. Insults were followed by name-calling and shouts of fury, and soon I was being harangued by a bellowing supervisor who refused to answer any questions but screamed at me, demanding to know just one thing: how had I got their contact number? Who had given it to me?
The hostility was so great, I wasn’t about to dob anyone in for simply being kind and patching me through to the right number, so I refused to tell him.
I realised why I’d been blocked for the last month: it was nothing personal, everyone was. I terminated the call, went straight to my principal to lodge a complaint and then immediately contacted my union representative to ask how to go about suing the education department.
Until that phone call, I had not had the slightest intention of taking legal action. But everything changed when I was subjected to screaming contempt and incendiary abuse, and when it also became clear I wasn’t the only one being treated this way and that those dishing out the foul language obviously intended to retaliate against the person who’d patched me through. It was a turning point.
I’m telling this story because I want to draw attention to the moment when everything changes. When people in positions of responsibility refuse to be accountable for their own actions and, in addition, are so unconscious of the vicious way they are treating others, then sooner or later someone is going to decide the perpetrators clearly have no incentive to change unless they receive a very costly lesson. Regardless of forgiveness, abusive people have to be held to account. Their language is power and, for them, forgiveness is a weakness to exploit.
With this as background, let’s examine Psalm 51. It’s a beautiful anthem of confession that David composed after he had been confronted by the prophet Nathan regarding his liaison with Bathsheba and the coverup involving the murder of her husband Uriah. The first six verses are a heartfelt appeal to God:
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to Your unfailing love;
according to Your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against You, You only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in Your sight;
so You are right in Your verdict
and justified when You judge.
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Yet You desired faithfulness even in the womb;
You taught me wisdom in that secret place. (NIV)
I imagine David, strumming away on his harp, composing this melancholy lament and singing it, perhaps in his private chamber, perhaps in his throne room, perhaps even on the rooftop where he’d once noticed Bathsheba. I imagine David’s friends and counsellors coming and going, listening and contemplating the lyrics as, line by line and bar by bar, the words came together with the music.
I imagine Ahithophel, David’s best friend, coming in and hearing this beautiful and grief-stricken plea to God. And it’s then, I have to suspect, that the irrevocable turning point in their relationship occurred. Perhaps that pivotal moment had actually happened previously but, if it hadn’t, then I’m sure hearing the words of this psalm changed everything. Ahithophel probably couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Against You, You only, have I sinned?’ he’d have wondered, disbelieving, stunned, shocked.
Huh? Excuse you, David!
What do you mean you’ve only sinned against God?
What about Uriah?
What about all the young men who were sacrificed to cover up Uriah’s murder?
What about the families of those young men?
What about their widowed wives? Their children? Their aged parents?
What about Joab whom you involved in your scheme?
What about Bathsheba herself? Her family? The son she bore? Your own family which will pay for this as they reap what you’ve sown? The nation as a whole?
Ahithophel was not only David’s best friend and counsellor, he was also Bathsheba’s grandfather.
It wouldn’t surprise me for even half a second if Psalm 51 with its blatantly inflammatory line, ‘against You, You only, have I sinned’ was the provocation that tipped Ahithophel into deciding that David needed a taste of his own medicine and that, if he didn’t get it, worse behaviour was inevitable. David was a man who could commit murder and adultery and yet be completely oblivious to the human suffering he’d caused. The state of David’s heart was revealed in this song and it was a patchwork of deep contrition and equally deep corruption. This verse reveals the hidden belief of David’s heart: ‘Only my losses count. I’m the king and the rest of you are so worthless, you don’t even rate a mention in my lament.’
This kind of attitude is highly offensive.
A friend of mine many years ago struggled to come back to faith because her mother failed to protect her against her murderously abusive father. The mother admitted she’d sinned against God in that failure and that He’d forgiven her. The vertical relationship with God might have been restored by seeking forgiveness from Him; but the horizontal one wasn’t. In fact, the horizontal relationship was made more difficult because the mother had sought God’s forgiveness but not her daughter’s. As that daughter had once not been worth protecting, now she felt she was not worth an apology.
In the story of David, the once-loyal friend Ahithophel eventually found his opportunity when Absalom rebelled against his father. Ahithophel took Absalom’s side against David.
And so here’s a question about that uprising for those who like to label treachery as the ‘Absalom spirit’. Did Absalom actually sin against David? Did Ahithophel? Or did they, like David, sin only against God?
When we’ve done wrong and our heart is convicting us, even if the world is not, we try to cover our shame by blaming others. We look for a scapegoat and we mete out to them the punishment we secretly believe we ourselves deserve. We make a violent sacrifice to assuage the call of our soul for blood.
So who did David project the blame onto for the deaths of Uriah and the troops accompanying him? Who was his scapegoat? The people of Rabbah in Ammon, of course. They were the ones besieged, but they were the ones who, in defending their city, had killed Uriah and the young soldiers of his band. When Joab was ready to take the city, he sent for David so he could command the final assault and thus have the victory attributed to him. Once Rabbah was taken, David extracted a vicious revenge in keeping with his own repressed guilt. Modern versions of the incident downplay its horror:
David took a great quantity of plunder from the city and brought out the people who were there, consigning them to labour with saws and with iron picks and axes, and he made them work at brickmaking.
2 Samuel 12:30–31 NIV
The old Greek version, the Septuagint, from the centuries before Christ, is a stark contrast with this kindly interpretation. This was, according to ancient translations, a major holocaust in the modern sense, along with torture and human sacrifice.
We are only surprised because it’s David, the sweet psalmist of Israel, a hero we’ve been groomed to revere. But once again, we find a flawed human being who is a complex mixture of light and dark, of soaring faith and vile depravity, of boundless courage and secret hypocrisy, of passionate loyalty and cruel ambition. His remarkable integrity was repeatedly marred by his breaches of covenant—breaches that we don’t tend to notice because we’re so used to excusing his actions.
When it comes to faithlines and David, we have to forgive far more than the adultery, rape and murder, we have to forgive the hypocrisy and lust, the cruel revenge, the inaction regarding abuse, the injustice, the breaches of covenant. At some point David became corrupted by power. The Lord’s forgiveness notwithstanding he planted the seeds of the destruction of his kingdom.
Only Jesus, the Son of David, can restore that kingdom to what it was always meant to be. And if your faithline inheritance is David’s mantle, then it’s only through Jesus and the power of His blood that these transgressions can be mended and the Kingdom of Heaven advance.
This is Grace Drops and I’m Anne Hamilton. May Jesus, the Son of David, rule your heart.
Thank you to Lorna Skinner of www.riversofmusic.co.uk for the background music.
Elijah’s mantle is discussed in The Elijah Tapestry: John 1 and 21: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #1.
Joseph’s mantle is featured The Summoning of Time: John 2 and 20: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #2.
Moses’ mantle—and Reuben’s mantle—will be featured in The Lustral Waters: John 3 and 19: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #3. Available late 2024.
David’s mantle will be covered in The Inviolable Kingdom: John 4 and 18: Mystery, Majesty and Mathematics in John’s Gospel #4. Available 2025.
Please get in touch through the contact form at Armour Books if you are in the US, UK or Australia and there are availability/price issues at the retailer for any of these volumes.