Siege of Rabbah - David's great Sin - Death of Uriah - Taking of Rabbah - David's seeming Prosperity - God's

Message through Nathan - David's Repentance - The Child of Bathsheba dies -Birth of Solomon. (2

SAMUEL 11, 12)

THERE is one marked peculiarity about the history of the most prominent Biblical personages, of which the

humbling lesson should sink deep into our hearts. As we follow their onward and upward progress, they

seem at times almost to pass beyond our reach, as if they had not been compassed with the same infirmities

as we, and their life of faith were so far removed as scarcely to serve as an example to us. Such thoughts are

terribly rebuked by the history of their sudden falls, which shed a lurid light on the night side of their

character -showing us also, on the one hand, thro ugh what inward struggles they must have passed, and,

on the other, how Divine grace alone had supported and given them the victory in their many untold

contests. But more than that, we find this specially exhibited just as these heroes of faith attain, so to speak,

the spiritual climax of their life, as if the more clearly to set it forth from the eminence which they had

reached. Accordingly, the climax of their history often also marks the commencement of their decline. It was

so in the case of Moses and of Aaron, in that of David,299 and of Elijah. But there is one exception to this - or

rather we should say, one history to which the opposite of this remark applies: that of our Blessed Lord and

Savior. The climax in the history of His life among men was on the Mount of Transfiguration; and though

what followed marks His descent into the valley of humiliation, even to the bitter end, yet the glory around

Him only grew brighter and brighter to the Resurrection morning.

Once more spring-time had come, when the war against the Ammonites could be resumed. For hitherto only

their auxiliaries had been crushed. The importance attached to the expedition may be judged from the

circumstance that the ark of God now accompanied the army of Israel (2 Samuel 11:11). Again success

attended David. His army, having in its advance laid waste every town, appeared before Rabbah, the strong

capital of Ammon. Here was the last stand which the enemy could make - or, indeed, so far as man could

judge, it was the last stand of David's last enemy. Henceforth all would be prosperity and triumph! It was in

the intoxication of hitherto unbroken success, on the dangerous height of absolute and unquestioned

power, that the giddiness seized David which brought him to his fall. It is needless to go over the sad,

sickening details of his sin - how he was literally "drawn away of his lust, and enticed;" and how when lust

had conceived it brought forth sin - and then sin, when it was finished, brought forth death (James 1:14, 15).

The heart sinks as we watch his rapid downward course - the sin, the attempt to conceal it by enticing Uriah,

whose suspicions appear to have been aroused, and then, when all else had failed, the dispatch of the

murderous missive by Uriah's own hands, followed by the contest, with its foreseen if not intended

consequences, in which Uriah, one of David's heroes and captains, who never turned his back to the foe (2

Samuel 23:39), fell a victim to treachery and lust.

It was all past. "The wife of Uriah" - as the text significantly calls Bathsheba, as if the murdered man were

still alive, since his blood cried for vengeance to the Lord - had completed her seven days' hypocritical

"mourning," and David had taken her to his house. And no worse had come of it. Her husband had simply

fallen in battle; while the wife's shame and the king's sin were concealed in the harem. Everything else was

prosperous. As the siege of Rabbah can scarcely have lasted a whole year, we assume that also to have

been past. The undertaking had not been without serious difficulty. It had been comparatively easy to

penetrate through the narrow gorge, and, following the "fish-stocked stream, with shells studding every

stone and pebble," which made "Rabbah most truly 'a city of waters,'" to reach "the turfed plain,"

"completely shut in by low hills on every side," in which "the royal city" stood. This Joab took. But there

still remained "the city itself," or rather the citadel, perched in front of Rabbah on "a round, steep, flat-

topped mamelon," past which t he stream flowed rapidly "through a valley contracted at once to a width of

five hundred paces." As if to complete its natural defenses, on its other side were valleys, gullies, and

ravines, which almost isolated the citadel.300