The whirlpool of sin and its effects (2 Sam 11:6-27)

When I hear of the spectacular downfall of prominent Christian leaders, I always wonder what was in their heart as they were sucked deeper and deeper into a whirlpool of sin. Were they riddled with guilt but could not stop themselves or did they gradually lose their sensitivity until guilt became only a faint echo of unease? Reading David’s story as he is set on this trajectory of sin, I wonder the same. Behind this question looms the larger one whether there was still a point when he and others like him could have walked away from sin. I recently led a study on Psalm 51, the prayer attributed to David after he was confronted with his sin by the prophet and was struck by the appeal in it for God to deal with sin. One word used (translated ‘wash’; Ps 51:2) means the pummelling or treading of clothes being washed. It is as if sin were a stain that penetrated deep into the fabric of our lives and was not easily removed.

Damage control that fails

David’s damage control to cover his sin seems initially a small step with great gains for him. Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband is called, ostensibly to report on the welfare or peace (shalom) of everyone in the camp (repeated three times in the Hebrew; 2 Sam 11:7). How ironic that David may seem to outsiders like a good king caring for the well-being of his people as he has always done when the reality is so much more sinister. What used to be inward reality is now only a mask. The king’s suggestion that Uriah should go home and wash his feet (2 Sam 11:8) seems deliberately ambiguous. Washing feet in a hot climate is standard procedure but feet is also a euphemism for genitals, so the king may be proposing that Uriah enjoy some time with his wife. No matter what David tries, however, Uriah resolutely declines to go home (2 Sam 11:11, 13). Does he know what David has done and then refuses to co-operate in a cover-up or is he reasoning innocently as a stalwart and principled soldier?[1] Either way, his refusal to take his ease while God (via the ark) and the rest of the troops are in hardship (v.11) casts the king’s sin in even sharper relief.

Deeper and deeper in

By this stage, sin seems to have penetrated deeply into David’s life and corrupted him to such an extent that the next step may no longer seem such a watershed. In a despicable act, Uriah is sent to carry his own death warrant to Joab, who improves on the plan (withdrawing from Uriah as the king instructs in 2 Samuel 11:15 would reveal to others what David is doing). Thus, the general decides to sacrifice other lives as well by sending a group into heavy combat too close to the wall to make Uriah’s death less conspicuous (2 Sam 11:20-21). David’s response is the most chilling, the ultimate stage in the whirlpool of sin when he cynically admonishes Joab not to let ‘this thing be evil in your sight’ (NASB ‘displease you’; 2 Sam 11:25), a phrase contrasted to God’s estimate that ‘the thing David had done was evil in the Lord’s sight’ (2 Sam 11:27).

The effects of sin

The way David is sucked into the whirlpool of sin is an object lesson for all of us about how unacknowledged sin will fester and permeate our life corrupting our outward attitudes into hypocrisy and changing our perceptions to the point where we may not even feel the enormity of our sin anymore. I am reminded of Gollum in the film, the Lord of the Rings, a hobbit who took the ring of power and murdered his friend in the process. In the flashback recounting this past incident, we see him as he once was, healthy and like everyone else of his kind. However, by the time the main story line of the film unfolds, Gollum is an emptied-out shell of himself, huge eyes in a sunken face, emaciated body and consumed by a desire for the ring. It is a graphic illustration of the destructive nature of power and sin. May we, with God’s help, take heed and flee temptation.

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[1] Meir Sternberg reflects on this question at length. The Poetics of Biblical Literature: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987), 203-13. Given that the act of the king was semi-public with servants involved in carrying messages and so on, Uriah may have heard on the grapevine what David had done.

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