10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife.

David had no thoughts of despising God when he sinned the sin which God condemned.‭ ‬He merely yielded to pleasant desire in the first instance,‭ ‬and then sought to screen himself from shame in the second.‭ ‬David feared God exceedingly and had not changed his mind towards God at all.‭ ‬Yet this was God's construction of his act:‭ ‬that in going contrary to the commandment God had given for the guidance of human action,‭ ‬David had‭ "‬despised God.‭"

Men do not think of this when every day in their lives they do the things God has forbidden to be done,‭ ‬and leave undone the things He has commanded to be done.‭ ‬What a fearful accumulation of guilt lies upon the children of disobedience‭! ‬What a fearful crime for men to despise God.‭ ‬Those despise God who despise His word:‭ ‬and those practically depise His word‭ (‬in God's estimation‭) ‬who neglect it or disobey it.‭ ‬They do so with impunity now.‭ ‬No harm seems to come to their negligence.‭

It would be foolish to be misled by appearances.‭ ‬It was so with Israel for a long time.‭ ‬It did not seem to matter whether they observed the law of Moses or not.‭ ‬The sun rose,‭ ‬the rain came,‭ ‬the harvest matured,‭ ‬prosperity reigned as much as when the first generation of their fathers feared the commandments.‭ ‬Yes,‭ ‬for a while‭; ‬but mark the expression

‭ "‬He will now‭ ‬remember their sin.‭"

Look out upon their calamitous history and see what this means.‭

Sunday Morning‭ ‬182, Seasons 2: 52

14 Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies [oyevim] of Yahweh to blaspheme [ni'etz (deride, ridicule, revile, blaspheme)], the child [haben (the son)]also that is born unto thee shall surely die.

The jeers of a hundred generations have since attested the truth of this declaration. At the present moment, there is nothing more cutting and withering in the way of infidel opposition to the Bible than the taunts inspired by David's sin. Is there nothing, touching the ways of providence, in the fact that David's sin should be punished by the open exhibition of it to all generations in the full and unvarnished narrative written in the Scriptures?

When David stands before "the great white throne" in the day of the judgment of the living and the dead, he finds that every individual in the mighty assembly is informed of his disgrace, and that the world has in every age resounded with the bitter taunt of the scoffer, shouting and execrating his name.

But David was "a man after God's own heart" notwithstanding, —his broken-hearted submission and abasement in this matter being witness. In the day of recompenses, his, not less than the holiest of the sons of God (and who is without sin?) will be the song:

"Thou hast loved us and hast washed us from our sins in thine own blood."

Ways of Providence Ch 17

23 But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

The King of Terrors

H.L.B.—"The king of terrors claimed his victim in our little family recently. A beautiful and promising little girl of five years was carried away by that terrible scourge, diphtheria. It is a fiery ordeal to have to stand by and see a loved one's life ebb away never to return."

Ah! death is no friend we can all feel, when loved ones of any relation are torn from our side. It is truly described in the Scriptures as an "enemy," the "last enemy" in fact that Christ will eventually destroy. The truth alone reconciles us to the situation of sadness, in which our lot is cast with the rest of mankind.

We know something of the reason of things, and that helps us the better to bear what otherwise would crush us like a moth: sin has entered the world, and death by sin. We wait, in joyful hope, the appearing of the life-giver, and the arrival of the age when

"there shall be no more thence an infant of days;" and when they shall not "bring forth for trouble; but when Israel shall be blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them" (Isa. 65:20, 23).

Israel so blessed will be like life from the dead upon the rest of the world (Rom. 11:15). Till then the exhortation to every sorrowing son of Abraham, and every grief-stricken or bereaved daughter of Sarah—

"cast thy burden on the Lord, he will sustain and comfort thee."

Think of Abraham on his way to offer up his only son and heir at the bidding of the Lord; then think of David, and how he fasted and prayed while the child was alive, peradventure God might have mercy upon him and the child; then the child dead, behold him rising from his sadness, washing and anointing his head, taking food, and assuming altogether a cheerful countenance again.

His servants were surprised, but David's explanation contained the sum and substance of all reason. Then look at God himself, who, like Abraham, withheld not His only son, but freely delivered him up for us all. Something comes to break the heart and spirit of all; it is grievous but profitable chastening to all those who are rightly exercised by it. It belongs to the present night of weeping—joy cometh in the morning, sweet and lasting as the sun.

The Christadelphian, Sept 1888

As to David and his child, David stated a fact, not a consolation, when he said the child would not return to him, but that he, David, in dying, should go to him. It was the reason he gave to his servants in answer to their enquiries, why he ceased his mourning before God now that the child was dead. It was the language of resignation, not of hope. David did not say, "I shall join him in heaven when I die." He said, "I shall go to him."

Where? Where he was: in death. David did not go to heaven. So Peter declared:

"David is not ascended into the heaven."—(Acts 2:34.)

David went to the grave. So Paul had said:

"And David, when he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was gathered unto his fathers, and saw corruption."—(Acts 13:36.)

So Peter also:

"He is both dead and buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day."—(Acts 2:29.)

This decided where David's child went, and though it might not be so pleasant to the feelings, it was none the less the truth. The truth was sometimes painful, such as the existence of the curse under which children were born and died.

The spirit returned to God who gave it; but the Spirit was not the person but the means of the person. It was God's before it came, and ceased to be ours when it went back to him.

The Christadelphian, May 1874

25 And he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet; and he called his name Jedidiah, because of Yahweh.

Scripture Names Doctrinally Applicable to Christ

Jedidiah. (Y'dhiydh-yah.) Beloved of Yahweh.

"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."—(Matt. 3:17.)

The Christadelphian, June 1873

31 And he brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln: and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon. So David and all the people returned unto Jerusalem.

The Treatment of Captives in David's Wars

It would be pleasant to suppose that 2 Sam. 12:31 meant that David put the captured Ammonites to their several trades, "under saws and harrows of iron and axes." But the way for this explanation seems barred by the statement in 1 Chron. 20:3, that he

"cut them with saws and with harrows of iron and with axes."

We might even get over this in view of the word "them" (italics) being absent in the original, and suppose that "he made them cut with saws," &c. But other statements make it plain that destruction, and not use, was what took place in such cases.

In 2 Sam. 8:2, we read that in the case of Moab,

"he measured them with a line, casting them down to the ground: even with two lines measured he to put to death, and with one full line to keep alive."

And in the case of Amaziah, we read (2 Chron. 25:12) that

"ten thousand (of the children of Seir) left alive did the children of Judah carry away captive and brought them unto the top of the rock, and cast them down from the top of the rock that they all were broken to pieces."

—The question is (accepting these occurrences in their most painful form), how are we to understand them in harmony with the reputation which the Kings of Israel had acquired as "merciful Kings" (1 Kings 20:31); and more especially, how are we to reconcile them with the spirit of kindness enjoined by the law of Moses?

There is an explanation. It is often said that men do in battle what they would never dream of doing in private life. 'Tis true in other directions. Men in a judicial capacity will do what they could not do as individuals. David, as King of Israel, in dealing with the idolatrous races of Canaan, has to be looked at as God's magistrate.

A divine mandate had given over these peoples to destruction in the days of Joshua. The duty of destroying them was left as a legacy to Israel, in the execution of which, they were remiss, to God's displeasure (Judges 1:27–36; 2:1–5).

David was faithful where Saul was slack-handed. To modern ideas of humanitarianism, it seems shocking. When the divine right to destroy the wicked is recognised, and the divine participation in the events recorded, is conceded, all difficulty vanishes.

The Christadelphian, Oct 1898