The Reading
The Summary
Shemuel Bet Chapter 11
This chapter represents the turning point of the entire story of King David. For the first time, we find David remaining behind in the palace while he sends Yoav, his general, and the army of Israel to lay siege to Rabbat, the capital of Ammon. One evening, following an afternoon nap, David is strolling on the palace roof and observes a beautiful woman bathing. He investigates and discovers that she is Batsheva, wife of one of his finest officers, Uriah the Hittite. He sends for her and they have relations together; she subsequently informs him that she has become pregnant from the encounter.
Hoping to keep his indiscretion a secret, David summons Uriah from the battlefield, meets with him briefly, and sends him home to his wife. Much to David’s chagrin, Uriah does not spend the night with Batsheva; instead, he sleeps in the company of his fellow soldiers.
David calls Uriah for another meeting the following day and asks him why he did not go home the previous night. Uriah responds that it would be inappropriate for him to be eating, drinking and sleeping with his wife while the Ark of the Covenant accompanies the army of Israel and Jewish troops are encamped on the battlefield.
David shares a meal with Uriah and manages to get him intoxicated; however, he again spends the night with the soldiers and does not visit Batsheva. His options exhausted, David composes a letter to Yoav instructing him to place Uriah on the front lines of the next military operation and to ensure that he is killed in battle; not knowing the contents of the missive, Uriah himself delivers this “top secret” communication to Yoav. Yoav carries out the instructions of David and sends back a message to David with a report on the progress of the siege. He tells the messenger that after David responds to the debriefing, he should also be informed that Uriah has died.
Once David has been informed of the latest developments, he sends back word to Yoav, encouraging him not to dwell too much on the loss of Uriah since casualties at war are inevitable. After she has finished mourning the death of her husband, David quickly marries Batsheva, so that the birth of their first child will not be suspect. It goes without saying that this incident did not find favor in the eyes of Hashem.
This story disturbs the reader on many levels and has been the subject of volumes worth of commentary. There are several questions here that demand our attention. Most importantly, how can we explain the egregious moral lapses of David, whom we have come to know as a religiously devout and consummately ethical human being? How did he rationalize this behavior?
Second, how is David allowed to remain married to Batsheva and for Shelomo, the son they have together, to become heir to the throne? Jewish law dictates that participants in an extra-marital affair are forbidden from marrying, even if their spouses die or divorce them. Third, how is David placed on such a pedestal as the ideal Jewish king and forefather of the Messiah when he committed such terrible transgressions? Shaul, his adversary, lost his kingdom for lesser offenses!
These last two questions will be addressed in greater detail in the next chapter; for now, we will focus on the first.
The Sages of the Talmud record two opinions on the matter of David’s sin; one that takes the description of his behavior literally as written, and one that “rationalizes” it. The second approach, which is the most famous among traditionalists, is that legally speaking David did not commit any transgression. This view maintains that all Jewish soldiers who went out to war gave bills of divorce to their wives in case they were lost in battle, so that they would not leave their spouses unable to marry if their whereabouts were unknown. If so, Batsheva was not technically married to Uriah at the time she had the tryst with David, and would have been able to marry him after Uriah’s death.
This school of thought also claims that Uriah defied David’s orders to return to his home, referred to Yoav as his master in the presence of the King, and even disrespected David by insinuating that his directions were inappropriate under the circumstances. This gave the king the legal right to have him executed. According to this, David did not violate any actual laws of the Torah here. However, even these rabbis would agree that David sinned – he says so, the prophet says so, and Hashem says so. The only point they are making is that the sin was not a legal one, it was moral and ethical in nature.
The main issue to bear in mind is that whether David was in legal violation of the 613 commandments is not the essential theme of the Book of Shemuel. The Rabbis and traditional commentaries, by claiming “one who says that David sinned is mistaken”, are trying to convey the idea that his sins were not legal transgressions but failings of character. We are not supposed to focus on the halakhic intricacies of his conduct, and to do so is to be blind to the prophetic message here.
Up until this point, David has never used his power or influence for personal gratification or self-promotion. He has never manipulated or abused his position as king. In fact, this has been the quality of David that consistently amazes and impresses us. So it is shocking to witness him casting aside the values that have convinced the reader to love and admire him so much!
The text gives us a sense of how this failure of David came to be. In the opening sentences of the chapter, we are told that David sent his men out to battle while he stayed back at the palace. He even enjoyed the luxury of afternoon naps while his troops fought and died on his behalf. Uriah’s speech to David implicitly takes him to task for this very failing – he has begun to enjoy the luxury of being the king, and to fancy himself “above” the menial job of defending and supporting his nation. This attitude was what led him to take another man’s wife and then play games to cover up his misdeed, ultimately orchestrating Uriah’s untimely death.
Halakhically justifiable or not – and we must assume David rationalized it some way or another – the text reveals to us David’s true motive and the nature of his sin. He had resisted amassing horses and wealth when he was still on the battlefield with his troops. However, after a while, partaking of the high life in the palace went to his head and he could not resist taking Batsheva and then doing whatever was necessary to hide his indiscretion.
On a textual level, Sefer Shemuel highlights the “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” transformation of David – his reversal from the ideal King of the previous chapter who meticulously follows the Torah’s laws prohibiting the king from acquiring too many horses or too much wealth, but who now takes women that he is not supposed to have, precisely one of the areas of the king’s behavior that the Torah regulates. Moreover, our chapter describes David writing a “book”; namely, the death warrant of Uriah that is sent to Yoav. There is deliberate irony here, because the Torah also commands the king to write a “book” – the Sefer Torah! David’s actions have fallen short of and even contradict the instructions of the Torah at this moment in his carreer.
One interesting point for further study and reflection is the role of Yoav and Uriah in the drama. Did they know that something was afoot? One gets the sense that Uriah may have gathered that David was “up to something” with his seemingly unnecessary meetings and questions about Uriah’s personal life; this may account for his harsher tone in his second encounter with the king. Yoav must also have suspected that David had a clandestine reason for wanting Uriah to be “eliminated” while preserving the appearance that it was a casualty of war. We may never know exactly who knew or suspected what, but it is fascinating to try to read between the lines with these questions in mind.