The Blessing of Bathsheba



She was bathing. She was doing what was required by the Law.  It was a ritual cleansing that women did that was required following menstruation.  When David’s men inquired of her on behalf of David’s lusty heart, she acknowledged she was the wife of Uriah.  She then went with them and she would sleep with David.

How often have we done what we are supposed to do, go through the motions of communion, or sprinkle a little holy water, a baptism, confessions… only to get up and go do what is unholy.  Sometimes it is not even thought of, other times it is so woefully shameful one may believe there is no hope of restoration with God.

When God is in pursuit of you, He will reveal how you stepped out.  And, He offers restoration.

Bathsheba became pregnant.  There was no hiding what she did.  David tried to sweep it under the rug by trying to get Bathsheba’s husband to have sex with her so that the possibility of the child could be Uriah’s and he wouldn't think differently.  Uriah’s nobility, commitment and honor to whom he was serving, the fighting men, would not allow himself pleasure over his army colleagues.

The thing he was denying himself was what David did not deny himself.  David chose to hang back instead of join the men in battle as a King was to be in battle with them in this particular time. He chose his own comfort and from there the desire of his pleasure increased all the more to the point of desiring Bathsheba.

Uriah would not step into the cover-up David attempted.  So, David set Uriah up to have him killed by placing him on the front lines and then have the soldiers fall back, leaving Uriah unprotected. Uriah was killed.  This kept David’s secret.  He was free to take Bathsheba as his wife, legitimizing the child and Bathsheba.

Here is where we start to see God make His move.  David was clueless to the truth of what he did.  The LORD once spoke to me saying, “Sin is deceptive until it’s reflected.” God told Nathan, the prophet, to go to David. 

 Nathan began telling a story about a rich man that had many sheep and a poor man that had only one.  The "ewe" (female sheep)  that the poor man had, he loved dearly and cared for and held to himself.  Nathan goes on to say a traveler came and needed to eat so the rich man took the one lamb of the poor man and killed it instead of one of his own.  David was outraged and said that the rich man “deserves to die!”  David saw death was deserving of such a crime.  Nathan said to him, “That rich man is you.”

David finally saw what he had done in taking Uriah’s wife and having Uriah killed.  When I read the story that Nathan told, I interpret the “traveler” that he prepared a meal for as a spirit of lust.  David satisfied it by taking another man’s wife instead of his own.  In the recognition of knowing now what he had done and where he was and the words that Nathan shared that were God’s upcoming punishment. In 2 Samuel 12:13-14 David cries out that he has sinned against The LORD. Nathan responds and says, “The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die.”  David knew in his heart that the act deserved death, but God in His mercy to David and in keeping with His promise that Christ would come from the house of David, God forgave him and would not have him die.  But, in verse 14, in God’s Holy and sovereign place against sin and prior to the full redemption of sin through Christ’s death for us, Nathan goes on in the message. “But because by doing this you have made the enemies of the LORD show utter contempt, the son born to you will die.”  It goes on to say that, “The LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill.

Bathsheba was not referenced in her name in this scripture.  She was referenced as Uriah’s wife with the child of David’s.  This reference was the part that had been the place of sin, but the child was innocent.  There was to come a day when God’s own innocent son would be the one to die for the sins of others.

As David prayed, humbled in the position before God lying on the floor and fasting and refusing drink for the seven days of the child’s illness in hopes that God may spare the child, God did not.  The child died and David knew that God did as He was going to do.  David had come back to the heart of God in humility and knowing that God is Holy.  David then went into the House of the LORD and worshiped.  He had come back to the place of God’s Holy presence and released himself into God’s will.

We don’t hear about what was happening in Bathsheba’s heart except that she was mourning.  Knowing all she knew, she would have mourned for the unholy place she had gone to and the suffering of her child.  She had known the LORD’s will because she had been following the Law in the way of cleansing, but she had not followed Him in fullness of heart.  Now she was stricken with the greatest grief; the death of her child.

2 Samuel 12:24  “Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and he went to her and lay with her.  She gave birth to a son, and they named him Solomon.  The LORD loved him,” See God’s blessing here. David comforted her.  The Word now calls her by name again and calls her, “David’s wife.”

The grace and forgiveness that God did with full redemption of now being David’s wife is here.  Beyond it is the fullness of this blessing of grace.

She conceives that night, a new life, and bears a son. 

This son, Solomon, is the son that continues the line of David where Jesus comes from. 

 It is a conception of grace. 

 A blessing on a woman that who on her own, was unholy, but in God, she is made holy again.  God didn’t choose any other of David’s wives, he chose the one with the most baggage, the one that received and needed His graces.

Are Bathsheba and David instantly perfected? No. Here is how we know as it goes on to speak of the baby, “and because the LORD loved him (the baby), he sent word through Nathan the prophet to name him Jedidiah.”  Jedidiah means, beloved by God.  David and Bathsheba did not name him Jedidiah, but Solomon.  But, God’s grace and blessing continued and His love continued in the name He Himself held for Solomon.

Jedidiah. 

Beloved of God.

The blessing of Bathsheba is grace, love, and in the holiness of God, she was a mother in the line of Jesus.

On our own we are unholy, but in God we are made holy.  Be in Him and know that He redeems through His forgiveness, love and grace.  Conviction is His desire to draw us back to Him.  No one is too far gone and what He can make of us is miraculous in love and life.

Psalm 86:15 ESV But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

Ephesians 2:4-7 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.