DAVID AND HIS SIN by W. H. Littlejohn

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 23, 1879

DAVID AND HIS SIN.

By W. H. Littlejohn

BY ELD. W. H. LITTLEJOHN,

Wherever the Bible is read, the writings and history of King David are destined to occupy a conspicuous place in the thoughts of men.

In what he has written and said in the Psalms and elsewhere, the devout mind finds a spiritual aliment which affords consolation, and instruction adapted to nearly every want and circumstance in life.

In what he has done, the infidel finds a weapon which he employs with more or less effect in his warfare against the inspiration of the Scriptures.

On one occasion the Lord declared that “David was a man after his own heart.” This declaration has furnished the text for many a labored attack upon the character of the God of the Bible. “Why,” says the cavalier, “if David was indeed a man after the heart of the God of Israel, then that God furnishes us with an adulterer and a murderer as a model of the highest type of manhood of which he can conceive. But such a statement we cannot accept as a true representation of the ideal of manhood which the God of the universe does really hold; and we therefore reject the whole statement, and the scriptures which contain it, as a sheer fabrication and a libel upon the character of the great author of all things.”

With this declaration, the issue is squarely made between those who are believers in the inspiration of the Old Testament and those who are deistical in their way of thinking. At first blush it would seem, also, that the rejecter of God's word possesses an advantage in the argument which it would be hard to overcome. No unprejudiced mind can believe for a moment that murder or adultery is right. When, therefore, the objector fastens the one squarely, and the other at least by complicity, upon an individual who was not only a king but also a prophet of the Most High, it is difficult to see how it would be possible to vindicate the God of David if, indeed, it is true, as charged, that David was approved by him as holy while in the continued commission of these wrong acts.

But before we surrender all faith in a book which purports to be a revelation from Heaven to fallen man, and which in its teaching is, as a whole, as outspoken in its condemnation of the sins in question as the infidel possibly can be, let us first inquire whether his premises are well taken and his conclusions correctly drawn therefrom.

We inquire, therefore, Was David guilty of adultery? The answer is necessarily in the affirmative.

We inquire again, Did he connive at the destruction of Uriah the Hittite for the purpose of shielding himself from shame?

The reply is once more in the affirmative. We ask still further, Did the God of Heaven ever approve David for the commission of either of these deeds?

Here the reply is positively in the negative. So far was he from doing so that he sent to the king the prophet Nathan, to declare to him the parable of the little ewe lamb which was the only property of the poor man, and which his rich neighbor took by violence from him and slew, for the express purpose of helping the king to see the enormity of his sin in the case of the wife of Uriah, and of furnishing an opportunity to express the utter abhorrence in which his course in the matter was held by the God of Heaven. (2 Sam., chap. 12.) In order, also, to put the matter beyond the region of debate, it is declared in the eleventh chapter and twenty-seventh verse of second Samuel that “the thing that David had done displeased the Lord;” and in the twelfth chapter of the same book, that God—not satisfied with a simple denunciation in words of the king's course—also declared unto him that as a punishment of his crime the sword should not depart from his house; at the same time smiting with death the illegitimate offspring of the king's lust. How far the threatenings of Jehovah were fulfilled the sad history of murder, rape, and rebellion in the king's own household, and among his own offspring, bears ample testimony.

Having shown now that the skeptic is wrong in asserting that God did really indorse the action of David, we are prepared to consider candidly and carefully the declaration that the latter “was a man after God's own heart.”

Is such language as is claimed by the infidel anywhere employed in the Scriptures?

It is certainly so done. (1 Sam. 13:14.) The next interrogatory to be propounded is, Was it before or after the king's connection with the matter of Uriah and his wife that the language was employed?

An examination of the record shows that, according to the chronology of our Bibles, this language was used fifty-eight years before the crimes had transpired which have been passing in review.

Here, then, two important facts are brought out. The first is that David's great transgression occurred in the latter part of his life, and that God emphatically condemned and punished the same, as positively set forth in the Word.

The second is, that the words of commendation and approval which God spoke of the king were uttered while yet he was innocent of adultery and complicity in the destruction of Uriah.

Putting these things together, we find that the infidel has made out his case by a perversion of the facts which appertain thereto.

He represents God as approving the course of David and cites as evidence the fact that the former spoke commendably of the latter, leaving us to infer that he did so after the latter had committed the sins in question. But as this is not true, he has utterly failed to carry his point, unless he can show that God could not properly approve the course of a man at one period of his life, and disapprove it at another.

But can he do this?

By no means. The slightest reflection will satisfy the candid reader that the life of many a man can be shown to have been exemplary and worthy of commendation up to a given point, whose subsequent course—as the result of strong temptation—has been characterized by deeds of the darkest hue.

Many a criminal has been able to point to the first step which he took in his downward course, and back of that to a life of comparative innocence.

As in their cases so in that of David. His earliest history was his best history. Up to the fatal hour of the king's walk upon the housetop, and his consequent amour with the wife of Uriah, his chastity, according to the standard of these times, was unimpeachable.

How unfair, therefore, the course of the infidel, who, ignoring this fact and the positive reprobation, in so many words, of David's course by the God of Heaven, seeks, by confounding the dates of the commission of the specific sins by David and God's endorsement of him, to deceive the unlearned and unwary into the belief that the God of the Bible had approved in the case of David of great immorality in action. The only justification which can possibly be offered in the behalf of those who persist in thus misrepresenting the real attitude of the author of the Scriptures as related to the sins of one of the greatest

men that ever lived, must be looked for in the ignorance of those who indulge in the same.

If, however, they shall still persist in their misrepresentations when apprised of their mistake, then this plea even cannot be offered in their behalf.

Should it be urged by any that the difficulties of the case are not entirely removed by the explanation given, since God did employ David subsequently to his fall, then we reply that—granting this to be the case—he was wholly justified in so doing; for if David sinned he repented of that sin in bitterness of soul, and turned again to the God of Heaven with his whole heart.

Will any one insist that after he had done so God ought still to cast him off, and to refuse to him a place of honor or usefulness?

Should they do so, we inquire, Who, then, can God employ in manifesting himself to men?

If it be true that he ought only to use those as the mediums of his revelation who have never sinned, and if it be true that thorough repentance for sin when once committed will not render it possible for God to employ the individual thus repenting as an instrument in his service, then he is precluded from revealing himself to us altogether; since “there is none that doeth good and sinneth not.”

To our mind the fact that God received David back to full favor after full contrition, instead of furnishing us an occasion for cavil, should be accepted as one for profound gratitude and thanksgiving; since it affords to all the assurance that their past transgressions do not necessarily exclude them from the favor of Heaven, and that there is hope for sinners of the deepest dye provided they repent and reform.

To our mind, also, the character of David, when taken as a whole, is—after making all due allowance for the times in which he lived—one of the grandest in history.

If he had his faults, he was also possessed of shining virtues. From the humblest walks in life—from following his father's sheep in the wilderness—he rose steadily to the highest honor which his generation could confer. As a warrior, his prowess was unequaled, and his genius was without a parallel in his age. As a king, he was wise and beneficent. As a prophet, his hand swept the cords of human sympathy, and struck the key of human experience, as no other had done before or has done since. As a father, his tenderness of heart and forgiving spirit, as he agonizes and pours forth a flood of tears at the undeserved death of a rebellious and unworthy child, are most forcibly brought out in his “would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Sam. 18:33). As a fugitive from the unreasoning and unreasonable Saul, his forbearance is most impressively illustrated by his refusal to take vengeance on his adversary when occasion had been offered him again and again. As a repentant sinner, the heartiness and thoroughness of his contrition afford manifest evidence that, although possessed of the weaknesses of human nature, there was in him after all a strength of principle which gave him the victory in the last resort. Sad it is indeed that through one fatal mistake his career has been measurably clouded.

But even in that mistake we see a disposition to counteract the terrible effects which would naturally follow. This he could not do altogether. The prophet declared that in his fall the wicked should take occasion to blaspheme God. (2 Sam. 12:14.) How fully this prediction has been realized the necessity for this article proves. While, therefore, we regret the action, and the occasion which it has afforded to the enemies of God for traducing his word, our faith in that word should be strengthened when we see how literally this prophecy concerning the course which the enemies of God would pursue in reference to David's sin has been fulfilled in ages in the past, and how literally it is accomplished even before our own eyes.—Allegan County Democrat.