Watching films in the thriller, action, or mainstream horror genres, I feel sympathy for characters who, it seems, are only introduced into the narrative to be killed off in the next change of scene. A recent Facebook quiz, “Would you survive in a slasher/horror movie?”, dives into the motif of the just-introduced, now covered in fake-ketchup extras: “You're in an old town and an 80-year citizen informs you that the five-storey house you're about to stay in is haunted. You...a) Laugh it off and forget about it. Houses can’t be haunted”, etc.
The Hebrew Scripture lectionary reading, 2 Samuel 11:26 - 12:13a, also features what one might call an “extra”: a character who is killed off in the same chapter in which we are introduced to him. In the prophet Nathan’s narrative about the poor man and his only sheep, through which Yahweh indicts King David for murder, Uriah has already left the stage. And yet the biblical narrative economically evokes our sympathy for this soldier in the few scenes that characterize him leading up to his death.
The reader’s respect and pity for Uriah is critical to the overall narrative arc of 2Samuel. Starting in this scene, David is portrayed, not purely as a “man after God’s heart,” the quintessential righteous king and defender, but as someone willing to commit murder to get the woman he wants. This scene is important to establish that the Bible is by no means a collection of Lives of the Saints. Rather, many of the narratives probe the psychology of individuals whose love for God does not prevent them from brutal acts. We thus see negative traits of David that show up again as his family life spirals into warfare and chaos. This narrative also gives a meditation on the nature of forgiveness; at the end of the passage, David repents. Yet the forgiveness he receives does not spare him from all consequences of his act.
2 Samuel 11, the chapter that sets events in motion begins with the line, “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle . . . David remained at Jerusalem.” It is possible to read this line as foreshadowing on the part of the writer that David is not fulfilling the proper role of a king; instead of risking himself with his army in battle, he is staying at home (NOAB, 460).
Uriah is first introduced into the story indirectly. Walking on his rooftop, David notices Uriah’s wife Bathsheba bathing. He sends an inquiry about her, and is told she is the wife of Uriah the Hittite. Rather than backing off upon learning that she is married to one of his soldiers, David “sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her” (2 Samuel 11:4). Bathsheba later sends David a message that she is pregnant. Since her husband is not at home with the army, it will be clear that he is not the father of her child.
In the following scenes, readers are introduced to Uriah for the first and only time. David’s first motivation is to bring him back to sleep with his wife Bathsheba, so that it will look like her child is Uriah’s. David calls Uriah back from the front to Jerusalem and asks “how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going” (7).
David then tells Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” The Hebrew word for “feet” is also used to indicate genitals, and this may be taken as a command to sleep with his wife. According to the editorial notes from NOAB, it would have been odd for a soldier to be called back from the front of a battle in this manner for a personal audience with the king. Although the writer of the narrative does not presume to tell Uriah’s thoughts, it is possible to assume that Uriah thought David was testing his loyalty. Another passage indicates that it was a norm during this time for soldiers to remain celibate before going into batter. 1 Samuel 21:5 includes the scene Jesus references in which David and his soldiers eat bread considered consecrated for priests; arguing for the soldier’s purity, David tells a priest, “Indeed women have been kept from us, as always when I go on an expedition; the vessels of the young men are holy . . .” (NOAB, 461).
After leaving, instead of going to his wife, Uriah sleeps at the entrance to David’s house with his servants. When David asks him why he does this, Uriah makes a speech of clarity, rhetorical power, and passion:
The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.
In the story, there is an odd tonal mixture of farce and tragedy. On the second night, David invited Uriah to a banquet, and the writer states directly that David “made him drunk.” Yet even in this compromised state, instead of going home to his wife, Uriah sleeps with David’s servants.
On the third day, David writes the letter which in effect gives the commander Joab orders for Uriah’s execution. The editor of NOAB writes that one can see David’s trust in Uriah’s loyalty was so great, David entrusts Uriah himself to deliver the order for his own death; the implication is that David knows Uriah will not read the letter. It states,
Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.
Joab, the commander of the army, fulfills David’s order without compunction. There is even a suggestion that Joab, in his message to David, uses Uriah’s death as a way to excuse his own tactical error of placing soldiers too close to the Ammonites’ fortifications (NOAB, 461).
This is the point in the narrative at which this week’s lectionary passage begins:
When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son (11:26).
In this narrative, there is symmetry between Bathsheba and Joab’s passivity in the face of hierarchical power. Neither resists David’s commands that result in Uriah being betrayed, and then killed.
Although other humans do not challenge commands David issues as King, the prophet Nathan expresses Yahweh’s judgment of David through the parable. The parable’s beginning indicates a continuity of Jewish storytelling conventions with parables of Jesus retold in the Gospels. When we here, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich, the other poor” (12:1), we know where the story is going. The rich man with many flocks of sheep steals a poor man’s single ewe lamb. Upon hearing the story, David exclaims, “the man who has done this deserves to die” (5).
Nathan expresses the reaction of Yahweh (translated as “the LORD”) thus:
Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. . . . And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.
Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own' (7-10).
David’s response is repentance: “I have sinned against the LORD” (13). The writer explains, although the LORD “puts away” David’s act and forgives him, David will be nevertheless be punished through future suffering.
There are many implicit values informing 2 Samuel narratives that modern readers of faith arguably do not share: most obvious would be the implication that waging aggressive warfare, not only defense, is the right and responsibility of kings; the idea that women, whether daughters or wives, are considered the property of their male family members; and the implication that the sins of an older generation are taken out on a younger one—David’s punishment is the death of his son with Bathsheba.
However, the story of Uriah contains implications about the nature of the human relationship with God that are timeless. Even as King of Israel, moreover a man who God loves, David not portrayed as immune to horrible moral failings. Although no human has the status or will to challenge him when he sleeps with Bathsheba and arranges the murder of her husband Uriah, Yahweh does not turn a blind eye to gross injustice but intervenes. David will be made to suffer, even as he has inflicted suffering. At the same time, he is restored into relationship with Yahweh by acknowledging his wrongdoing.
Coogan, Michael, Ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (3rd ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
--Elizabeth Fels
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