August 4, Ordinary 18B (2 Samuel 11:26—12:13a; Psalm 51:1–12)
There is no one who does not need God’s mercy and no one who may not have it.
“Your kingdom will not continue; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart; and the Lord has appointed him to be ruler over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you” (1 Sam. 13:14). These are the frank words with which the prophet Samuel announces to Saul the end of his reign over Israel and God’s election of David to rule in his place. And yet, in this week’s reading from 2 Samuel, we see that David, too, has failed to keep that which the Lord commanded him. He has sinned against the Lord in sinning against Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah; he has used his power to gratify his own desires at the expense of others; he has committed adultery and murder with shocking ease.
And even after all this, he apparently has no insight into the wrong that he has done. The arrival of a prophet of the Lord inspires neither fear nor introspection, and David is immediately prepared to cast himself in the role of righteous avenger in Nathan’s story, unable to recognize that he has already made himself its villain. There is a brilliance to Nathan’s approach here: by the time the word of God’s condemnation is made clear to David, he has already unwittingly acknowledged not only his own guilt but the grievous nature of his exploitation of those with less power than himself. There is to be no disputing the matter once it has been raised.
David repents. Psalm 51, that classic penitential psalm of Ash Wednesday, is his lament and petition to God for mercy.
