40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 2 Samuel 11:14-27 (Episode 270)

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

Uriah won't cooperate with David's plan to cover up his sin, so he sends him back with a letter instructing Joab to make sure Uriah doesn't survive the battle. Joab doesn't follow the instructions, but still gets David what he wants. And David marries the wife of Uriah. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. 1517 Podcast Network Regional Event in Las Vegas 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast, so you can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts that we got living over there. and while you're over there, go to the events page and make sure that you sign up for the Here We Still Stand regional event in Las Vegas, Nevada. That's going to be October 15 and 16.

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good time. We're going to be talking about assurance. We're going to send City to talk about assurance. You want to be there, come from wherever you are, come hang out with us. Chad, this week, we are going to be getting into the second half of the lowest part of David's life. We ended where David had gotten Bathsheba pregnant and called Uriah, her husband, back from the fighting, which David should have been there in the first place and avoided all this, but he was not. And so Uriah comes back. David tries to get him to go to sleep with his wife, so he can think that that baby is his, but he won't go, because his men and all the people

of Israel and the ark, they're all out there in the elements, and he's not going to go into his house, so he just sleeps outside on the porch. And so next night, David says, well, I'll just get you super drunk, and then, you know, maybe all your ideals will loosen up a little bit, and you'll go do what you need to do. That does not work either, and that is where we left it. David has tried twice to get Uriah to go down into his house. Uriah won't go because Uriah is a man of more integrity than David, and we're about to see just how much more integrity than David, and we're going to see that David knows that Uriah is a man of great integrity. Yeah, we kind of stopped this last episode at just about the, at least the entry point to what is arguably, as we discussed right

before we started what is arguably one of the uh the lowest verses of the lowest and coldest verses of the scriptures i mean there's a lot of anybody who knows the scriptures pretty well knows there's a lot of pretty uh pretty bad stuff there but this is yeah this ranks pretty high pretty close to the top um so david's exhausted all of his efforts to try and get uriah to to go to his house and so uh he comes up with with another plan a plan that is going to not improve the situation, even for himself, as we'll find out later, but it's going to make everything, and I mean everything, worse, which is pretty typical of sinners. You know, anytime we try and deal with a sin ourselves, you know, try and cover it up or come up with some sort of self-atonement

or whatever it might be, we always make things worse. So that's exactly what David is about to do here. So we're in 2 Samuel chapter 11, verse 14, and Uriah has been there for about three days. It's time for him to go back, and so David gets up in the morning, verse 14, and he gets a pen and paper, and he writes a letter to Joab, his nephew, who's the commander of the Lord's army, and he sends it, and this is the frigid phrase right here, sends it by the hand of Uriah. so he's written this little scroll and is going to send it by uriah to joab and what's inside this little scroll verse 15 tells us that in the letter here's what david wrote set uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting and then draw back from him that he may be struck down and die

period that's a pretty short quote i'm thinking you know a little scroll of papyrus rolls it up, seals it. Now, there's a lot of unanswered questions that I have. One is, how certain is David that Uriah is not going to read this letter? I mean, he's got to be pretty certain. Yeah, I mean, it seems that Uriah's unwillingness to go down to his house, go down to his wife, has informed David enough and has made him confident that he can send this with him and it will arrive there unopened this is one of those no good deed goes unpunished kind of situations yeah yeah a man of a man of such integrity would never dare open a private correspondence between the king and his generals so he uh he feels safe yeah it's it's wild i mean

if i'm trying not to have david be as cold as i will make him seem when with the next thing i'm going to say it's well I'm going to put my seal on this and like then you know you have to break the seal to read it and if you know this note gets to Joab with the seal broken then you know then Uriah has done something that no one is supposed to do so there's that so maybe that's part of why David feels confident it's not it's probably not just rolled up and has a string on it it's probably got his seal on it that would have to be broken for it to be read if I'm being And really, if I'm being really cold about it, though, David is sending—David could send this— it's not like every man in all of Israel that has the ability to travel is at the battle.

David does not have to send this by the hand of Uriah. He does not have to. He can send it through someone else. He can send Uriah back, and he can grab—he's already grabbed servants. He already has servants that are in the know. he can grab one of them say hey i got this note you need to take this to joab he can use someone else so if i'm looking at it from that angle this seems vindictive that that david is irritated at this point that uriah has not played along with his plan that his plan has failed david's a guy

who's we've you know said multiple times is used to getting his way he's used to being able to get what he wants and uriah is not cooperating it almost reads like this that david is saying okay if you're if you're if you have so much integrity and you have you have these definitive lines that you won't cross i'm going to send this note by your hand and is going to uh you're going to deliver your own death sentence so if you want to read it like that that is incredibly cold and vindictive and yeah yeah and it would actually fit with the unraveling that we see happening to david i mean morally of course he's unraveled but even even just his well you know the way that we've we've seen him throughout all these various episodes he's he's a very smart guy he's not

just kind of a dumb warrior or he's not just someone who's just you know got all the political skills that are going to raise him to the top of the food chain he's very smart he's very perceptive And we've seen him in multiple situations get what he wants because he is a very, at times, wily, but at times, very wise guy. What's happening here is we're not only seeing the moral unraveling of David, but also, I guess to put it bluntly, he's acting stupidly. Because you think about the instructions that he's just given to Uriah to give to Joab. set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, that he may be struck down and die. Well, how in the world is Joab going to pull this off?

Number one, that means that he has to create a scenario where it is blatantly obvious that Uriah is being set up to do that. He's probably going to have to inform those around him. Yeah, exactly. So Joab can't do this on his own, in other words. Joab is going to have to convince Uriah's fellow warriors, who are no doubt very close to him. I mean, they're willing to give their lives to protect their fellow soldiers. So he's going to have to convince them to withdraw from Uriah in this situation.

And to do that, he's got to convey to them that it was the king's orders, which is going to just raise more questions like, well, why would David want Uriah dead? You know, what's going on back home that we would have these kind of orders? So the carrying out of David's mission, David's proposed mission, is just preposterous. There's no way that it could work without creating a whole lot of other problems for Joab and Uriah's fellow soldiers, and then, of course, the blowback to David. So I think this is a case where we see sinners acting stupidly, basically. and of course you know we've all seen that in our own lives we've seen that in the lives of others too where a person who i mean they might have a um they might have a a degree or degrees they might be people with with a high iq they might conduct themselves in most of their life in a way

which is very intelligent and then there's that one thing or that one area of their life where they act like an imbecile and in this way they their their particular action then has ramifications for the whole rest of their lives i mean we we see that this is the story of humanity over and over and over where people who are otherwise if not intelligent at least you know of average of average intelligence uh do something just monumentally dumb and then of course it affects the rest of their lives and that's kind of what you see happening with david he might be a smart guy but that doesn't mean he doesn't make stupid decisions well well covering up sin makes otherwise smart people act in stupid ways because you start to panic david is obviously panicking

as i read this there's there's a couple things going on that david is desperate to cover this up he's angry that uriah is not cooperating uh and so he's acting rashly he's panicking he's upset uh all of these are a recipe for doing something extremely foolish and something that you're that he will regret uh not and not just because not to you know spoil but that does he's that he's going to get found out but no doubt that once the the emotions calm once the panic and the fog goes away and he's going to have to realize what exactly he's done and you know anyone who's like every every sinner knows what this is like when the dust all settles and you actually realize what's gone on he's going to regret it and feel very badly about what what it is that he's did

oh yeah yeah yeah i mean i everybody listening to this uh can probably think back to specific scenarios in their lives where where maybe it wasn't what david's doing but it was a something equally uh disastrous and sinful and i mean i certainly do in my own life look back and many times i think what in the world were you thinking yeah you know that is that it's that kind of looking back at our past and thinking, yeah, what in the world was going on in your head at this point in time? And I'm sure David went through that too. He looked back at this and he's like, oh my gosh, what did I think would happen? Why did I say that? Why did I do that? Well, it just goes to the heart of one of the things that sin is. Sin is the unraveling of

our anthropology it's unraveling of who we are who god created us to be and part of that undoing involves the undoing of just kind of making rational rational decisions yeah so anyway uh that's the message that's a long time to spend on those two verses but i think it's it is one of those verses that uh is worthy of of just mulling over and seeing all the all of the implications it has so for six well so well so next i mean we're gonna get into here joab kind of carrying this out we don't know it doesn't it doesn't uh like you said that this seems like an impossible thing to carry out exactly the way that david had described it i mean i know a guy my dad was in the military and i know other guys that were in the military uh this seems like it was something

that would be almost impossible to get the people that i know that are in the military to do and they're not fighting this there's not there's not even this i don't even think there's the same level of sort of brotherhood that there was back in back in this time when fight i mean this kind of fighting is this is hand to hand this is hand to hand this is close-knit people this is uh god i mean you're you're sleeping in these tents together you're out for long periods of time together i don't it's and i think that's one of the reasons why we don't have the information that joab was able to carry this out exactly that way i think joab does what he can to to ensure that uriah is dead but i don't know that he goes and informs a bunch of guys i don't think he probably

does we don't get that because i don't think joab thinks that that's possible no i think in fact this is one of those cases where uh and we'll see it actually in the messenger that joab sends back to david where that's kind of one of the the sub themes of chapter 11 and 12 that messengers don't always carry out exactly what they're sent to do. Uh, so this, this message that, that Uriah brings to Joab is not carried out the way that David wanted to. And then when Joab sends a messenger back to David, the messenger does not relay the message to David the way that Joab told him to relay it. So there is this disconnect between what the messenger says and then what the, what, what the sending of the message, what the guy that sends a message says, and then what the

messenger actually does so anyway verse 16 here's what happens joab was besieging the city we read about that back in verse one and he assigned uriah to the place where he knew there were valiant men presumably because he knew that these would be the guys who would be kind of the tip of the spear the men of the city came out and fought with joab so they besieged the city but as often happened in ancient warfare when they saw a chance the soldiers within the city that was being besieged would go through the gates and go out and attack as many of the besiegers as they as they could so that's what's happening here the guys in the city they come out they fought with joab and some of the servants of david among the people fell uriah the hittite also died

so that's a just kind of a brief narration of of what happened now we're gonna as in the verses that follow we'll see how joe i've described what happened as he sends a message back to david so uriah is uriah is dead and obviously other people are dead too because some of the servants of david among the people fell so it's not your only uriah that died some other people died as well now verse 18 says that joe i've sent there's that verb again which i brought up in our last episode this shalach verb send everybody's sending messengers everybody's sending here and there And we'll see in chapter 12, God is going to get in on the game too, because he's going to send Nathan to deliver a message to David.

So Joab sends, and he told David all the news about the fighting. And he's going to give very specific instructions to the messenger. This is verse 19. He says, when you have, he's talking to the messenger, when you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, Then, if the king's anger rises, and if he says to you, now this is fascinating, listen, so this is Joab telling the messenger, if David uses words like this, so this is kind of Joab imagining himself standing before David, listening as the messenger relays these words to David, so this is

kind of what Joab thinks David might reply in anger. Why did you go so near the city to fight? did you not know that they would shoot from the wall who killed abimelech the son of yerubasheth did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall so that he died at thebes why did you go so near the wall so just in case joab says just in case david says all of this angrily to the messenger when he relays what happened then joab tells the messenger if david says something like that if he's angry here's what here's what i want you to say to calm his fury your servant uriah the hittite is dead also now that this this particular message that joab sins is fascinating on on several different

levels first of all it's it's humorous in a dark sort of way because we've seen multiple times when a messenger comes to David, and that messenger is not received well. We have at least two occasions where messengers come to David, and they ended up dead. Now, there were reasons for that, of course. One claimed that he killed Saul, and the other claimed that he killed Saul's son, Ish-bosheth. But those situations did not go well when the messenger came to David. So Joab, of course, is aware of this. And he's also, interestingly, he's assuming that David is going to be at least somewhat angry upset about the message that a lot of his soldiers have been killed so he wants to give the message or something in order to kind of pacify pacify

David well it kind of seems like there was a military move that was made that Joab doesn't think David will be that happy about and Joab is basically is basically letting him know once he gets angry listen that's the move i made to accomplish what it was that you wanted to accomplish because this idea of just throwing him in the middle of the fight and then pulling back is insane and no one's gonna go along with that yeah this is joe ab's way of saying all right david i got your message that you're right i brought that was dumb it's never gonna work that's just not militarily possible so here's what i did instead i put him with a bunch of valiant guys our best soldiers and they went pretty near to the city wall you would say too

near to the city wall but that's what we needed to do in order to accomplish what you wanted to to have accomplished so yeah Uriah is dead but so are a lot of other people as well yeah so this is why this this gets you know worse and worse and worse is now Uriah is not only dead but now a bunch of other people are dead because of joab trying to figure out a way to get david what he wants knowing that he can't get david what he wants the way that david told him to do it and i don't and i just don't think i don't think that joab's wrong i just don't think there's any any way that that what david wanted him to do was going to work no i don't i don't think so either i think this was probably i mean joab is a is a highly accomplished military commander he's been

in this for for quite a while so he it's not like he doesn't know what he's doing and he's actually there unlike david who's back in jerusalem so he probably did the best that he could in order to accomplish what david wanted to be done and so yeah david gets what he wants but there's a whole lot of other people dead so the casualties just keep building up i mean the adultery was bad enough uh all the things that he all the lies he told uriah were bad enough sending the message by uriah was horrible and now we have a whole bunch of dead people so the deaths just keep piling up all in the effort to cover up the the sins of of the king now perhaps you're wondering as i did when you're listening to joe i've given these mess and these instructions to the messenger

why would that's a very specific example to give as to what david might say verse 21 or verse 20 says you know didn't you know they were going to shoot from the wall and then verse 21 who killed abimelech the son of yerbosheth didn't this woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall so that he died i mean that's a that's a very very specific example to use right uh and most of the commentators that i've that i've looked at it give a pretty convincing case that uh the reason joe i've used this particular example is it's sort of a uh a jibe at david because if you remember what what this situation is so abimelech was the son of gideon and right after the death of gideon abimelech comes along and what does he do he murders all his brothers so abimelech too was

responsible had blood on his hands and then when abimelech attacks this particular town a woman weaponizes a millstone and throws it down and crushes his crushes his skull and if you remember the the details of that story afterward this is all in the book of judges like judges maybe chapter 9 or 10 or something like that after abimelech is wounded in the head he asked his armor bearer to kill him to pierce him through less people say he was killed by a woman yeah so most of the commentators argue that what Joab is doing here is basically mocking David for letting a woman be responsible for all the things that are happening to him. Now, that doesn't mean that Joab is right, that David is responsible for all this, but it does seem to be a very specific

example that he pulls up here and kind of reading between the lines. It might be this nephew's way of getting back at David because, of course, there's been some bad blood between Joab and David in the past as a way of kind of mocking him for getting himself in the situation that he's in. But whatever the reason might be, your eye is dead. So that's what the messenger is to relay to David. So picking up with verse 22, let's see what happens.

I wouldn't want to be this messenger, by the way. No. Steal yourself for what might come. Yeah, I mean, this messenger's got to be very confused. He doesn't know what's going on. He's like, this is a weird message. I don't like this at all. Yeah, he's probably got to be asking himself, too, like, okay, wait, if he's upset,

I'm supposed to really calm him by telling him Uriah's dead? How's that going to work? So either he's in the know now, or he's a very confused messenger. Yeah. so verse 22 says that uh he went to carry out his mission he comes and he tells david all that joe had sent to tell him verse 23 now listen to the messenger does not does not follow joe's orders because he doesn't even wait for david to possibly become angry verse 23 the messenger tells david the man gained an advantage over us and came out against us in the field but we drove them back to

entrance of the gate now that's a little bit of a of a nuance we were not told before that they drove them back to the gate and then the archers shot at your servants from the wall which of course is what happened in ancient warfare some of the king's servants are dead and your servant uriah the hittite is dead also so he was supposed to wait and if david was angry he was supposed to you know, use that as kind of his ace in the hole. It kind of seems like what Joab was going to do is he's like, hey, tell him this, and Joab kind of wants him to get angry. Yeah, I think that's probably right.

Yeah, Joab wants him to say, like, well, that's stupid, and we lost a bunch of guys. And he's like, yeah, Uriah's dead also, and that was supposed to be the way of Joab telling David, yeah, there are a bunch of guys dead, and that's what it took to get your stupid plan done. Yeah. So basically Joab's saying, I'm not a bad general.

Like, what you wanted was extremely expensive. Yeah, the cost was incredibly high. Well, what's David going to do? How's he going to react? Well, he doesn't react the way that Joab thought he might. Because this is what David says to the messenger. So this is more or less what David wants the messenger to take back to Joab. So David says to the messenger, here's what I want you to tell Joab.

Don't let this matter displease you. Literally in Hebrew, that is, don't let this matter be evil in your eyes. So the reason I say that, it will become significant here in just a minute. So don't let this matter displease you, or don't let this thing or this matter be evil in your eyes. Because the sword devours now one and now another. strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it and then david adds at the end and so encourage him we we've witnessed some pretty uh some pretty cold moments so far in this this particular episode but this is another one of those highlights because david's react david

doesn't even get angry david's reaction is kind of uh glib stoic well you know that's just kind what happens in warfare people die yeah he's not even he doesn't seem to be upset whatsoever that we put it differently he seems to be so pleased that uriah is dead that that overshadows any upset feelings or reactions he might have that a lot of other people are dead yeah the collateral damage doesn't seem to matter at all he's just relieved that that is done i do think that this that i don't say that don't let this matter displease you is probably a little unfortunate of a translation because i think it sort of baked into the message that joab sent was the implication that this is what it costs and that it is evil in joab's eyes like this that

there's something very something very wrong has happened and what david is saying is trying to tell him is like hey don't let this thing be evil in your eyes which it apparently is So this plea is just a little too soft, I think, for what David's trying to communicate here. David is trying to say, I know you think that this is a real evil thing that we just did. It's not. Sometimes people die in war, man. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. I got this from Peter Lightheart.

He says that David was operating according to the principle that one man was not operating according to the principle that one man must die for the people, but rather that many people must die for the one man, the king. So that's kind of the way that David is approaching this. And so the reason to just kind of jump ahead a couple of verses, and I fully agree with you with regard to the translation. The reason it's important is because, so David says through the messenger to Joab, don't let this matter be evil in your eyes. Now, if you jump down to the very closing sentence of the chapter,

we read this. but the thing that David had done was evil in the eyes of the Lord. Yeah, and again, you have this translated in most translations. Displeased. Yeah, the thing that David had done, displeased the Lord. That seems a little mild. Yeah. I mean, I've been displeased before.

That would not probably be my reaction to something like this. Like, you know, I'm just a little displeased right now. Yeah, yeah. I can be displeased. I was going to float the river this weekend, but it's rained in the forecast. I mean, that's displeasing. I can be displeased that my meal at the restaurant was not what I wanted. There's a lot of things that are displeasing.

I was about to say, I was displeased yesterday when the ranch that I ordered with the chicken strips was not in the bag, and I was halfway home, and so I just had no ranch, and that displeased me. But it wasn't quite evil. It wasn't evil in my eyes. I was just a little displeased. Yeah. So these are these cases where, as I've pointed out many times, I wish they would translate them a little more literally than the way we get here. Jumping ahead a little bit, the message that David sends back ends with, encourage him.

Well, I don't really think this was very encouraging to Joab. When Joab did receive this message, he probably was upset that David wasn't upset. Because I'm sure the messenger said, I'm sure Joab asked the messenger, how did David react? I mean, was he mad? How did things go? Obviously, you're alive. So that's a good sign. But was David really furious because all of this collateral damage? And I'm sure the messenger told him, no, he was weirdly like stoic about the whole the whole situation. so joe i would not have been encouraged by by this and you know to uh to jump back to to the bad blood maybe that's too strong a term but i don't really think so between david and joab you got to think from the perspective of joab too remember how upset david was yeah when joab got revenge for uh uh the the death of his brother i mean david was just like

up in arms about this oh my gosh he just he like he made joab be in the procession of the funeral of the very guy he had killed and made him all wear sackcloth and made a whole big kind of scene out of this to make sure that everybody knew everybody knew that david had absolutely nothing to do with the death of this innocent man yeah now and now you're trying to you bringing me into your mess i mean what joab did was cowardly but it wasn't like he killed you know all the other guys around him and i was like i mean joe i was gonna be thinking like look okay you didn't really you thought what i did was cowardly and it was it was a cowardly way to do it uh but but he was avenging someone i mean i mean this other guy did kill his brother now it wasn't the situation was

wasn't exactly murder but i think joe i was thinking like look i had a way more legitimate reason to kill somebody and i at least when i did it and maybe maybe it wasn't maybe it wasn't unjust killing at least it was just him and and then when it happened like i didn't drag you into it you you made sure that everyone knew that you had nothing to do with it i was left hanging out there by myself now you've like wrote me into this horrific thing uh yeah i'm sure if there wasn't if there was merely tension between joab and david before it seems now that there's a there's probably a lot more than just tension joab is probably fairly upset with what he's had to do yeah which is which is one of the reasons i i think that he used that example i referenced earlier about

ben malek you know he can't come right out because first of all he's speaking to a messenger you know He can't come right out and confront David to his face and tell him what a low life he's become because of all this. But he's going to do it in kind of a roundabout way as much as possible. So the messenger takes the message, it's delivered, and we're not really told anything after that about what happened when the messenger got back to Joab.

We're just kind of at the re-between the lines. But we are told in two concluding verses to this chapter how everything happened after this particular scene. Now, notice the language is used to verse 26. She's not called Bathsheba. I think I think this is significant. We're not told that's when Bathsheba heard that Uriah was dead. That's not the way this reads. When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah, her husband, was dead.

and I it's impossible for me not to think that that is very very much on purpose the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead making sure that we realize not that we don't already but it's putting it in our face to make sure we know the situation so the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah was their husband was dead she lamented over her husband so she mourns his mourns his death we're not told how long but presumably for a relatively brief period of time only because she is as we need to read the next verse she's going to be married to David so this can't be drawn out for months on end and she's pregnant so when the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead she lamented verse 27 and when the morning was over David sent and brought her

the verb that's used there by the way is kind of interesting it's not the one that i would have expected to be used it's not the word for take that we saw earlier when he sent and took her so he sends and david asaf which is the word for like add or something like that added her uh it's translated here as as as brought her but it's it's kind of a it's kind of a strange Oh, he did. He is about to add her to his collection of wives. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of what was going through my mind, too. It's just a, like, gathered, remove, add. It's just an odd choice of language to use.

But anyway, so when this happens, he gathers her, adds her, brings her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. So the time frame here is significant Because we're going to see in the next chapter Of course what happens when God sends Nathan to speak to David But some time passes So you know that nine months goes by And we don't know

Some of this stuff takes a little while You've got to send a messenger And then Uriah's going to die Messenger's got to come back That could take a while But there's still several months that are going by Since the death of Uriah and David probably thinks that he has sort of gotten away with this,

that this is a done thing, and he's unrepentant. You do wonder if David is claiming this to be his son, if this mourning had to be quick, and then this marriage had to be quick, and then this announcement of her being pregnant has to be quick, because unless he's going to say that, oh, well, she was pregnant from Uriah from before, maybe he's doing that, I don't know, but he's definitely going to, it seems as though the intention is to claim that this is his son. Yeah, yeah.

I think that especially given how what happens after the child is born and becomes ill, I think David has let it be known that, or at least given the impression, yeah, that it's his child. Was born a little bit early, that's all. Yeah, some time passes, which I think is significant to bring out because I think sometimes when people read this story, and and i was i was like this too in the past uh i thought well you know so your eye is dead and then the next week or maybe a couple weeks later or maybe the most a month god sends nathan he

confronts david no months months have gone by and nothing's happened so as you said david probably thinks that he's gotten away with this yeah and it doesn't you don't get a lot here we still don't know i mean is that sheba okay with becoming david's wife don't know is this does she have a choice in this probably not i mean we don't know it doesn't tell us her feelings about it but it does seem as though this would be a hard thing unless see he is somehow able to keep this from her which seems impossible yeah i mean yeah what does she know that's another that's kind of a looming question does she know she obviously knows uriah is dead but does she know how yeah why i mean it's a it's a very odd coincidence isn't it that as soon as uriah is back in town

and then leaves and he's killed and killed in battle yeah and you know and this chapter does end with this but this thing that david had done was evil in the eyes of the lord i think that you can obviously it's the adultery the the murder all of that uh but it does come after this and david took back sheba as his wife and she born his son and i think that that's probably included in the things that are evil on the side of the lord so i mean i don't think god is like well all that other stuff was evil, but this last part was probably okay. I mean, this is David just adding her to his, and maybe that's why that word is used.

He just added her to his collection of wives. He already has wives, and this whole thing that included is evil in the sight of God. Yeah, it's one of the, this is kind of a strange feature of this story. It's ugly in so many ways, but there are aspects of it just in the very literary structure of it that are beautiful just the way it's the story is told and of course you can have that you can have a very ugly story told a very beautiful way it's this is kind of like that the very structure of this is uh perfectly crafted and you're so you

read through the story and you're you're almost kind of waiting for those final words you don't hear them you know so he commits adultery nothing is said about this being displeasing to god he sends uriah with his death sentence nothing is said about this displeasing so it's almost like the narrator waits to the very end and then as the curtain is closing out steps the prophet and says oh everything that you just read about was evil in the eyes of the eyes of the lord yeah and then we'll see as we transition to chapter 12 how god is going to going to deal with this i mean sometimes he just lets does let us make a huge mess of our lives and then he steps in and says uh repent he calls us to repent and confess, and sends a preacher to us to say those words and to pronounce

the absolution over us, which is exactly what's going to happen in the parable that Nathan's going to tell that will start out chapter 12. Yeah, all right. Well, we're going to hear what God's response is to this thing that is evil in his sight next week. Chad, I'll see you then. See you then. We'll see you next time.