2 Samuel 12:1-12
In this passage we read of the Lord sending Nathan to David to deliver a story. The purpose of the story is to evoke conviction from David to bring him unto repentance for the sin he committed in the previous chapter ( 2 Samuel 11 ). As David had yet been unrepentant over his sin, God uses an emotive story to stir up his heart.
We could similarly ask the same question of our own life by asking ourselves: how would God try to prick our conscience on unrepentant sin?
It can be easy to plead ignorance and claim that you do not know what God’s law says regarding sin, and if this be the case in your own walk as a Christian then the first encouragement to you should be to read God’s word from cover to cover .
Commit to a Bible reading plan and stick to it!
It might be difficult trying to get through certain aspects of Scripture, but if you persevere until the end you will be greatly rewarded with a deeper knowledge of Christ Jesus and your love towards Him.
If you find going through Scripture personally difficult join a small group at your local church. You’ll know a small group is a good one to attend as it will go through God’s Word and increase your spiritual growth. Every day you’ll come to appreciate and love Christ Jesus more and more.
Here are some popular questions we had regarding our study of the passage listed above.
Who confronted David’s sin?
God was the one who confronted David’s sin. This is an important point which you can easily gloss over when reading the text. As the sin committed by David had been done in secret ( 2 Samuel 12:12 ), Nathan did now know, therefore, God used Nathan the prophet to deliver a message to him.
God uses a heart-felt story to prick his conscience as to the gravity of his sin. David had not shown any signs of repentance until Nathan sternly told him Thou are the man ( 2 Samuel 12:7 ) and then proceeded to inform him of God’s punishment.
Who was the prophet who pointed out David’s sin?
God used the prophet Nathan to deliver His message of judgement to David ( 2 Samuel 12:1 ).
Why did God speak to David through Nathan?
We do not know why God used Nathan to speak to David. God could have used anybody to speak to him, but he chooses Nathan. Nathan had previously been mentioned around David as early as 2 Samuel 7:2 where David seeks a house for the Lord. Nathan encouraged David’s request ( 2 Samuel 7:3 ), but later that night God speaks to Nathan and halts David’s idea ( 2 Samuel 7:4 – 11 , David’s interpretation: 1 Chronicles 28:3 ).
Was Nathan the prophet David’s son?
David had a son named Nathan as listed in 2 Samuel 5:14 being one of his sons born in Jerusalem. However, the prophet Nathan and David’s own are not the same person.
A parallel passage in 1 Chronicles 3:5 further adds that the four listed in 2 Samuel 5:14 were all born from Bathshua.
We know the mother of Solomon was Bathsheba, or as quoted above Bathshua , and Solomon was her second child ( 2 Samuel 12:25 ) to David with the first-born dying 7 days after his birth ( 2 Samuel 12:18 ).
When did God confront David over his sin?
An interesting question regarding God’s confrontation of David’s sin is how long did God take to confront David about it? Although we are not informed as to the exact timing of events, there is enough in the story to be able to piece together a general timeline.
There are three assumptions you need to make to be able to arrive at an answer to this question, and all three are not something you could conclusively derive from the passage in Scripture. These three questions are:
1. How long did it take for Bathsheba to discover she was with child?
Could have been anywhere from 1-6 months. When David committed his adulterous act, Bathsheba realises she is with child ( 2 Samuel 11:5 ). This may be due to her awareness of missing a menstrual cycle, or the awareness of physical changes to her body.
2. How long did it take for Uriah to travel from the battleground to Jerusalem?
Joab was fighting in the city of Rabbah ( 2 Samuel 12:27 ) which would have been no more than a couple of days’ journey from there to the capital city of Jerusalem.
3. How old was the child when Nathan confronted David?
We are not told the age of the child in Scripture, the child could have just been born (it could have even been a premature birth) or, the child could have been an infant (< 12 months). As the child had not been named, it is more probable the child died not long after it has been born. Unfortunately, even at the birth of the child, David had still not been repentant towards God.
Even though we might not be able to pinpoint an exact amount of days, or weeks for when God confronts David over his sin, it does speak of God’s longsuffering towards David’s sin.
David even echoes this same quality of God’s longsuffering once in a Psalm:
Yet even though God is longsuffering towards all men, there is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgement ( Hebrews 9:27 ). God’s desire is for all men to repent, to turn unto him in confession and repentance:
And our unresponsiveness could be as it was with David – we become cold-hearted, or hard-hearted towards sin and are unwilling to confess and forsake it.
What parable did Nathan tell David?
The Lord instructed Nathan to go to David, and to tell him a parable (a story) of a rich man who takes his poor neighbour’s solitary little ewe lamb, who had been loved and nourished, and kills it serving on a platter as food for a traveller who had come to stay at the rich man’s home.
David had committed a heinous sin as detailed in 2 Samuel 11 . The chapter itself ending with:
… But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.
— 2 Samuel 11:27 (KJV)
Notice we don’t read of any conviction on the part of David. Even after everything was “cleaned up”, there is nothing mentioned from Scripture on a genuine repentance or deep guilt on David’s heart.
He had committed an adulterous act in laying with Bathsheba ( 2 Samuel 11:4 ), the granddaughter of Ahithophel, and then upon being informed by Bathsheba that she was with child ( 2 Samuel 11:5 ) David then tries to cover up his sin through the following means:
- His first attempt was to recall Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, from the battlefield, ask at how the battle was faring and then sends him away with some food hoping he would spend the night with his wife by going home and eat the food provisioned by the king ( 2 Samuel 11:7 – 8 ).
- When Uriah instead spent the night with David’s servants ( 2 Samuel 11:9 ) foiling David’s first plan, David then invites him back and tries a second time to get him to go home by feasting and drinking with him. This achieves David’s intended result by having Uriah drunk ( 2 Samuel 11:13 ). However, when Uriah leaves the palace he still goes to sleep in the servants’ quarters.
- David then writes a letter to Joab, for Uriah to be positioned at the hottest part of the battle, and they were to retreat while Uriah fought so that he would purposefully die in battle ( 2 Samuel 11:15 ).
As we can see from David’s attempts to cover up his sin, each attempt becomes more brazen. At no point does David accept blame for what he has done, knowing adulterers, according to the law, were to be punished by death.
Why does God first tell David a parable?
God wants David to see the seriousness of his sin. The means by which God pricks his conscience to reveal the seriousness of his sin is to tell a story that God knows David would personally empathise. God is going for the heart, and He uses a rich man, a poor man and a little ewe lamb in His short story, the little ewe lamb being the central piece of the story – one which David would perhaps be most fond of being once a shepherd boy:
11 And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep . And Samuel said unto Jesse, Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come hither.
— 1 Samuel 16:11 (KJV)
Notice when David had committed all these sins after laying with Bathsheba, that his conscience doesn’t arouse repentance naturally .
God can use whatever means to prick our own conscience to help us to understand the gravity of our own sin, the question is whether we’re listening.
For those who are born again and saved, the Bible calls this form of punishment chastening :
5 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: 6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
— Hebrews 12:5 – 6 (KJV)
How does God prick David’s conscience?
God can use whatever means He deems necessary to help prick our conscience to sin. In this account God chooses a means of a short story. Other instances in Scripture where God pricks the consciences of men are:
- Telling the truth ( Acts 2:37 , Acts 7:54 )
- Presenting a challenge ( John 8:7 – 9 )
- Telling a story ( 2 Samuel 12:1 – 4 )
Interesting how these three aspects used in Scripture are what we get from the pulpit each Sunday.
Could God be trying to prick your conscience?
What if you never attend church? Are you around faithful brethren and are humble enough to be challenged and questioned by them?
What we tend to do is exactly the opposite. We are afraid of going to God, because we know what He will say. Therefore, by distancing ourselves from Him we think we can continue in sin.
Notice also in the various accounts listed above each had some effect. It would be rare to be pricked by God in the heart and to not be affected by it.
We have various responses from even those references outside our passage here, men were either: converted, became murderous, or walked off, no one remained in the same state when they were challenged.
How do we know the story had an impact on David?
We can see the story told from God through Nathan to David had a massive impact because of how Scriptures annotates David’s reaction. In 2 Samuel 12 verse 5 we read:
5 And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, [As] the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this [thing] shall surely die:
— 2 Samuel 12:5 (KJV)
The two reactions we see from David towards the rich man in the story are:
- An angry heart;
- A severe punishment (death) for the wrongdoing (theft).
David has arrived at the right conclusion, but now God turns this angry heart towards a fictious character in a story to David and Nathan quickly retorts:
7 And Nathan said to David, Thou [art] the man.
— 2 Samuel 12:7 (KJV)
God has evoked a right reaction from David through the story, but now for it to have a massive impact David needs to see the same wrongdoing in his own heart from what he done to Bathsheba and her husband Uriah.
How is God pricking our conscience?
This is why when we see the sin of others we ourselves can get angry, but instead of rebuking the sin quickly in others, perhaps God is using the witness to expose the very sin in our own lives.
As a Christian you can easily get caught up in condemning everybody else’s sin, but fail to reflect upon whether we ourselves suffer from the same thing.
Is it right to be angry at sin?
In Ephesians 4:26 we see God’s Word stating Be ye angry, and sin not . This is a difficult thing for us to wrestle with as it can be easy to get angry, to think that we’re righteous about it too, but to sin not . This is the most difficult aspect for us.
How can we be angry and sin not?
The problem with sin is that it is usually attached to people. When we say we are angry at sin, take for example gossip, it’s right to be angry about it, but if we display that anger towards those who do gossip then we cause strife and contention.
Therefore, it’s important to not only be angry at sin, but to be angry with our own selves as we wrestle with the flesh. We continue to seek God’s help by seeing sin as He sees it.
Who was David married to when he slept with Bathsheba?
David had several wives before he took Bathsheba. David’s first wife was Michal (Saul’s daughter) who was given to him after he provided a dowry of 100 foreskins of the Philistines ( 1 Samuel 18:27 ). David’s second wife was Abigail, who had previously been the wife of Nabal ( 1 Samuel 25:42 ), and Scripture also mentions that David had taken another as wife around the same time – Ahinoam the Jezreelite ( 1 Samuel 25:43 ).
However, 2 Samuel 3:2 – 5 lists several wives David had also acquired when he was leader in Hebron. Namely, these wives were:
- Ahinoam ( 2 Samuel 3:3 )
- Abigail ( 2 Samuel 3:3 )
- Maacah ( 2 Samuel 3:3 )
- Haggith ( 2 Samuel 3:4 )
- Abital ( 2 Samuel 3:4 )
- Eglah ( 2 Samuel 3:5 )
In this same chapter we also read the return of Michal, David’s first wife, to him ( 2 Samuel 3:14 – 16 ).
So prior to David establishing himself as king over all of Israel, he had 7 wives (6 while he fled from Saul and then reigned in Hebron, and 1 when he was working under King Saul).
David had 7 wives prior to David’s adulterous affair to Bathsheba (refer to 2 Samuel 3:3 – 16 ).
Does God approve of polygamy?
As David had 7 wives prior to his adulterous affair, it may be claimed he had more because of God’s statement in 2 Samuel 12:8 that God had given him Saul’s wives as well. God here is not endorsing polygamy. He is merely stating a fact of ownership and control.
It was a sly tactic of the day when if one could take a wife or concubine of a king it could help to assert a claim to the throne. We read in 2 Samuel 3:7 – 11 an accusation by Ishbosheth that Abner had slept with his father’s concubine. Ishbosheth had made the claim to somewhat shame the general and to assert his authority and control over him, but it ended up back-firing against him.
Perhaps the best example of this is seen in 1 Kings 2:13 – 25 where Adonijah, Solomon’s elder brother, requested Abishag the Shunammite to wife ( 1 Kings 2:21 ). Solomon’s response is quite telling: