The Devouring of the Lamb

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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All right, we'll pray first, and then we'll get into our little mini study today. So let's pray.

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Lord Jesus, as we open up your Word, we ask that you would send your Spirit, open our hearts and our minds.

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Help us to rightly believe and confess and walk according to what you have revealed in your

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Word, recognizing that repentance is a daily act for your children in Christ, because daily we struggle against the temptations of the devil, of the world, and even our own sinful flesh that would will for us to wrongly believe and to walk according to our selfish passions and desires.

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So through your Spirit and your Word, Lord, put those things to death in us that are not right and not in accord with what you have revealed in your

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Word. And we ask this to the glory of your holy name, in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so Mark says,

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Mark wonders if announcing unclean was more for health reasons since it was a contagious disease rather than an attempt to shame the leper.

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Even today, people are quarantined when they have an infectious disease. So Mark, here's the thing, is that clearly, in part, what was happening was a way of quarantining people.

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And the Mosaic Covenant, even before there was any human science to back it up, understood how contagious diseases worked.

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And so as a result of that, leprous skin outbreaks, and even things that were touched by people who were unclean, they had to be examined and then washed, and if whatever was breaking out in it was even worse than that, then things had to be burned.

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Clearly, this was a means by which God was protecting His people without explaining to them how microbiology and germs and things like that work.

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That being said, it's also important to note that the verdict of unclean didn't come from a local physician.

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The verdict of unclean came from a priest who was in an office established by God Himself. And so in the

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Mosaic Covenant then, somebody who had a leprous skin outbreak, there was no mere medical evaluation of unclean.

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The unclean came from God Himself through His agents, priests. And so in the minds of the people living under the

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Mosaic Covenant, there's no way to secularize this. It was a religious verdict declared by God, yet it's also clear that God was protecting

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His people through it. So to declare yourself unclean in the presence of people was to say the same thing that God said about you through the priest.

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So it wasn't merely a quarantining issue, it was also a required confession of your status before God.

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So we don't make those distinctions, okay, at least in that sense. Now, real quick, we'll do a little mini -study here, and I apologize again.

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I do have to really watch my time today because of my travel time out to Emmanuel.

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But I wanted to point something out in the Levitical law that I think is kind of fascinating as it relates to the story of David and Bathsheba.

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And a few weeks ago, I made the that Bathsheba may actually have been capable of putting on her

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Twitter feed, hashtag me too. And what I find fascinating is that with the release of Rachel Denhollander's book,

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What Is a Girl Worth?, these are her memoirs of what she endured at the hands of that Olympic gymnast,

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Dr. Nasser was his name, who eventually went to prison. I'll say the

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Calvinist Twitterverse blew up when she basically made the claim that, yeah,

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I think we can honestly say that David, that his activity, his sexual advances towards Bathsheba were unwanted, and that they may have actually been manipulated and coerced, which would put that into the category of a sexual assault or a rape.

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And there's been a lot of controversy about this. But I think it would be fascinating to consider a few things related to this topic that I didn't even cover in my

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YouTube video because it was a little more complicated, but I think at least might, in fact, be worth covering in our study today.

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And we're going to notice a few things about this, that when it comes to adultery, the

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Mosaic covenant recognizes that it takes two to tango.

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All right? So adultery technically is, you kind of put it in modern terms, the consensual sexual contact between two people who are not married.

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And usually if both people are single, we'll talk about it in the realm of being fornication.

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But if one or both parties are married, then that falls into the category of adultery.

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But the commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery, is not merely a command for married people.

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It is a command then that encompasses all sexual purity in that case.

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And we're going to notice a few things as it relates to the Mosaic covenant regarding punishments and how this works.

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So in Leviticus chapter 20 verse 10, it says, if a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.

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And so the commands of the Mosaic covenant is that both parties are to be put to death when it comes to adultery.

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And that's kind of an important thing. And so you can basically say that this is a requirement here of the law, that both get punished, both suffer, both die as a result of it.

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Now that being the case, the text itself in 2

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Samuel is actually quite complicated on a few instances.

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And we'll do a little bit of work in the Hebrew here today just because I think that it'll really help us out on a few levels.

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But I think you can strongly make the case that Bathsheba was not complicit at all in her sexual contact with David, and you can make it from the text and kind of demonstrate how it works.

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So in 2 Samuel 11 -2, it happened late one afternoon when

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David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful.

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Now, bad sermons on this text, basically, what they attempt to do is to blame

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Bathsheba in this account, and basically saying that she was bathing provocatively in a way that her intent was to get

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David's eye on her body. She was kind of engaging in some kind of seductive behavior.

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However, the Jewish historian Josephus tells us that Bathsheba was in her house bathing.

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Now, this is where we have to make a distinction also, and the question is, what was the purpose for which she was bathing?

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Now, I'm going to note here that the translators of the ESV, in verse 4, they interpret what is said in verse 4 as the bath that Bathsheba was taking was in accord with her cleansing herself from her uncleanness, which when you look at the cross -references, they think the uncleanness being addressed here is regarding her menstrual cycle.

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And this is where a careful reading of the Mosaic Covenant is actually quite helpful.

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So let me show you the text that they think are in play, and we're going to be, let me duplicate this tab, and we are going to look at the

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ESV's cross -references. So Leviticus 15 .19 is going to be our first one, and so yeah, we're in Leviticus, we're doing a fine reading of Leviticus today.

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Leviticus 15 .19 says, when a woman has a discharge, and the discharge in her body is blood, she shall be in her menstrual impurity for seven days.

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Whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening. Now, a little bit of a note there, there's no requirement, per se, here that says that she's required to bathe at the end of her cycle.

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So we'll keep reading, though, for context sake. Everything on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean, everything also in which she sits shall be unclean, and whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be clean until the evening.

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So notice again, it's not referring to her, but everybody who touches anything. So anything which she sits shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, whether it is a bed or anything on which she sits, when he touches it, it shall be unclean until the evening, and if any man lies with her in her menstrual impurity comes upon him, he shall be unclean for seven days, and every bed on which she lies shall be unclean.

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So there's one of our cross -references here, but you'll note there's no explicit command that at the end of the cycle that the woman is to bathe, but anybody who comes in contact with her uncleanness is required to bathe.

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Again, kind of the fine points of the Mosaic Covenant are important here. Other cross -reference that is listed is, again,

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Leviticus 15 -28, and let's take a look at that. If she cleansed herself of her discharge, she shall count for herself seven days.

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After that, she shall be clean. So context then here, every bed on which she lies, all the days of her discharge shall be to her as the bed of her impurity.

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Everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her menstrual impurity, and whoever touches these things shall be unclean and shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening.

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But if she is cleansed of her discharge, and I want to see something here.

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If she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count for herself seven days, and after that, she shall be clean.

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So cleansed of her discharge here means that the day in which her menstrual cycle stops, then she counts seven days, and after the seventh day, she's already declared to be clean.

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You'll note no bath is required on the seventh day to make her clean. Cleansed of her discharge means that it has stopped, and that on the seventh day, that she's still unclean for seven more days, and once that is finished, then she's considered to be clean, and there's no requirement there to take a bath.

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I'm just pointing all this out because this is important data as we consider what's going on there, and so we'll pay attention to how

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Leviticus plays into a right understanding of what's going on in 2 Samuel. So let's take a look again at what the other cross -references are, just so you can see how the

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ESV plays this out. Leviticus 18 .19, we'll throw that in.

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18 .19, you shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness.

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Again, no requirement in the Mosaic Covenant in Leviticus for a woman to bathe once she has finished menstruating.

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She's just considered to be unclean for seven days, and then she's considered clean after that.

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All of that's important because the question comes up, so this first bath that Bathsheba was taking sounds to me like just her daily bath.

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If she lived in the 21st century in our world, this would be the regular time in the when she would get into the shower and relax and clean herself and go to bed clean.

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It just has to do with personal hygiene. It's not actually referring to something that relates to anything that's ritual.

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This is just normal daily hygiene kind of stuff. All of that being said, I'm going to come back to this.

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You'll note that the ESV thinks, and this is the way they translate it, now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.

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The ESV works with the belief that the bath that she was taking while she was spied on by David was a ritual bath regarding her menstrual cycle, and they're wrong.

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This is where I'm just going to disagree. I would quote people from the NASB over the

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ESV in this case because I think they are getting it right. So we're going to note then that what is out of context is any statement that says

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Bathsheba intentionally did this. That's slander. There's nothing in the text that indicates that Bathsheba was intentionally trying to get the eye of the king on her and for the purpose of ensnaring him in this sin or that she was somehow complicit.

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She was merely taking her daily bath. That's what's going on here.

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So David looked through her window, basically, is what's going on here.

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She's not bathing in public, and nobody is permitted to do that in Israel.

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Public bathing isn't a thing for men or for women in ancient

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Israel, so that's just not permitted. You're not allowed to uncover somebody's nakedness. Those things are forbidden by the

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Mosaic Covenant explicitly. So here's what it says then. So it happened one late afternoon.

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David arose from his couch. He was walking on the roof of the king's house. He saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful.

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So note David is the one in the driver's seat here. Whoa, who's she? So David sent and inquired about the woman, and one said, is not this

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Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? So David is informed this woman is married.

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He knows she's married. And not only that, daughter of Eliam, probably a good chance that this is a pretty high official in Israel at the time, from a very notable clan.

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Some scholars kind of point out that Bathsheba's dad is pretty well placed in the life of Jerusalem there.

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So knowing that she is married, the next part of this is actually kind of interesting, and it forms what is called a chiasm in Hebrew.

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So you'll note that the direction as it describes David goes one way, down in order, and then it picks up at the bottom of the chiasm with the actions of Bathsheba perfectly mirroring and opposite the actions of David, which is kind of fascinating.

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And for this then, I'm going to switch translations to the NASB, which is a far more literal translation than even the

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ESV. The ESV is a great translation, but it's more literal. So here's the order of events then that follow.

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David sent messengers and took her. He took her.

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The verb here for took is a singular. He's the one who did the taking. So David sent messengers and he took her.

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That's step one. When she came to him, he lay with her. So she came to him is the second.

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Three, he lay with her. Now, watch what the text says.

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And when she had purified herself from her uncleanness. The Hebrew really, there's a participle here.

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It basically reads, and purifying herself from her uncleanness. So that's the next step.

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So he lay with her. She purifies herself from her uncleanness. She returned to her house, the woman conceived.

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Okay. It's kind of a chiastic thing here. Now, note here, the question is, what is this purifying herself from her uncleanness?

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It's not the initial bath that she was taking. Instead, it is something very different, because we'll note that when a woman has her menstrual cycle, once it stops, all she has to do is count seven days and she's considered unclean.

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I'm sorry, she's considered clean. Okay. It's just a seven day thing. It's just a simple count, no bath is necessary.

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So what did she purify herself from as far as her uncleanness is concerned? And here's what it says in Leviticus 15, 18.

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If a man lies with a woman and has an emission of semen, both of them shall bathe themselves in water and be unclean until the evening.

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In other words, what we see happening here is that Bathsheba takes a second bath, and the second bath is the one that is required of Leviticus 15, 18.

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Because David, there was an emission of semen when it came to her, clearly she became pregnant.

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That being the case, note here that her behavior is completely contrary to somebody who is intentionally setting out for the purpose of adultery or even complicit in it.

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In fact, it's like David takes her,

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David lies with her, her first action after that is she's going to remain obedient to the

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Mosaic Covenant and bathe herself according to the command, and this is a finer command that a lot of people don't even pay attention to, the command of Leviticus 15, 18.

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And this actually shows something about Bathsheba's character. She is pious, all right?

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And so I would argue, what's the point of obeying Leviticus 15, 18 when you've just broken the

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Sixth Commandment? You shall not commit adultery. There's no point in doing this if you were complicit in committing adultery here.

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You've broken the bigger commandment, who cares if you take a bath now? But you'll note then her bathing herself immediately after her encounter with David really strongly says, number one, this is a pious and religious woman, and number two, that actually kind of has like a secondary thing to it as well.

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Bathing yourself, it's like she's getting David's ick off of her, which is actually, again, consistent with a woman who the sexual contact was unwanted.

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It's very consistent with that, and her following Leviticus 15, 18 is a big indicator as to what's going on here.

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So the mention of her purifying herself, the right way to understand it, it has nothing to do with menstruation or anything to do with the first bath, the one that David ogled her with, but instead has to do with her contact with David.

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And when you pay attention to the details of Leviticus, that's exactly the conclusion you come to.

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So I'll come back then to the ESV, because I just think the ESV does a disservice here, because what they end up doing is trying to make it appear that the mention of her purifying herself, and so here it is in the

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Hebrew, and she purifying herself from her uncleanness, and so that's all it says, and purifying herself from her uncleanness.

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That's all it says in the

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She then returned to her house. Again, it's a chiasm in detail here.

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So the woman then conceived, and she sent and told David, I am pregnant. Now, Bathsheba knowing the

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Mosaic Covenant as well as she does, I'm not going to argue, she knows it really well, and she's keeping even the smaller minutiae of the commandments that are required in the

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Mosaic Covenant requires now both of them to die, because whether or not she wanted

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David's sexual advancements or not, there's no way around it.

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The Mosaic Covenant is going to find them both guilty due to the fact that she's pregnant with his child, and so she knows full well.

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Now, this is where other bad preaching comes into play, and other bad preaching, it goes along these lines that she informed

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David with the expectation that he would kill Uriah the Hittite, that somehow she was complicit in the plot to have

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Uriah murdered, or at least at first to have Uriah come visit her when he's on military leave.

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But note what happens here in the and that is that David doesn't send word to Bathsheba.

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Bathsheba is not informed as to what he is going to do regarding this sticky situation that they both find themselves in now.

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So it says, so David sent word to Joab, and you're going to note, Joab will become the co -conspirator with David, not

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Bathsheba. So David sent word to Joab, send me Uriah the Hittite. Joab sent

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Uriah to David, and when Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing, and how the people were doing, and how the war was going.

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Then David said to Uriah, go down to your house, wash your feet, and Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king.

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But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house.

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Now a little bit of a note here, and that is that you'll note that Uriah has really, really good character.

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And this will actually come up in Nathan's parable that he'll tell as well, but you can see this.

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So what do we know about Bathsheba? We know that Bathsheba is pious, she's observant of the law, and her husband has just stellar character.

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I mean, this guy is selfless, he thinks about what is appropriate for him in regards to the other men that are serving in the military, and this guy's character is amazing.

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So note then, they don't suffer from a bad marriage at all, okay?

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In fact, that'll come up in this as well. And so anybody who wants to make

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Bathsheba a co -conspirator with what is happening here, again, they're reading things into the text that are not there.

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Bathsheba is not aware of David's plans, because nowhere in the text that David sent word to Bathsheba that when

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Uriah shows up, just spend some time with him so that the child looks like it's his.

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Not at all, okay? There's nothing in there. So yeah, well, that's not exactly quite right, we'll talk about that later.

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Okay, my wife asked me a question and I'll have to, it's a little complicated, it throws me off track if I go down that route.

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So anyway, so you'll note, Uriah, upstanding fellow, Bathsheba, Torah observant, like down to the nano thing.

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So when they told David Uriah did not go down to his house, David said to Uriah, have you not come from a journey?

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Why did you not go down to your house? Uriah said to David, the Ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my

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Lord Joab and the servants of my Lord are camping in the open field, so shall I go down to my house, eat and drink and lie with my wife?

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As you live and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing. He thinks that that would be evil of him, for him to enjoy things that are kept from his other soldiers.

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So David said to Uriah, remain here today and tomorrow and I'll send you back. So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next, and David invited him and he ate in his presence and he drank, so that he made him drunk.

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Now a little bit of a note here. David is engaging in really just sleazeball activity here, and one has to wonder, did he engage in this same kind of behavior when it came to Bathsheba in order to lower her moral walls or whatever?

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The text doesn't say, but man, this is interesting behavior on his part. Had he done this with Bathsheba, we'd all be able to say what this is.

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This is like the equivalent of a date rape or something like that, purposely intoxicating a person in order to make it so that they're not in the right mind.

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That's exactly what Lot's daughters did to him, which led to the tribe of Moab.

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But anyway, that's a whole other thing, but you're going to note here that what he's doing to, I mean, this is absolutely unconscionable.

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David, the only person he's thinking about right now is David. So in the evening, he went out to lie on his couch in the servants of the

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Lord, but he did not go down to his house. And so in the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab, sent it by the hand of Uriah, so he gets to carry his own death sentence.

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Great. All right. And you'll note that David here, he's using his power within the government as the king.

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He has access to messengers, and he's enlisting in his help the co -conspirator

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Joab, and he's even making a false paper trail here. So you can see how he's abusing the systems of government for the purpose of covering his own sin.

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It's actually horrific when you consider about his abuse not only of Bathsheba now, but of his abuse of his power in his office for his own gain here.

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So in the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab, sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter, he wrote, set

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Uriah at the forefront of the hardest fighting and then draw back from him so he can be struck down and die. And as Joab was besieging the city, he assigned

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Uriah the place where he knew that were the valued men. So, you know, Joab is going along with this.

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No questions asked. All right, King David wants me to do this. You know, apparently Uriah has fallen out of David's good graces.

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Okay, so the co -conspirator is not Bathsheba, it's Joab. So, and the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David among the people fell.

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Uriah the Hittite also died. So Joab sent and told David all the news about the fighting, and he instructed the messenger.

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And you note here that this is now the creation of a paper trail. A false one at that, but all for the purpose of basically covering

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David's bases. All right, so when you have finished telling all the news about the fighting to the king, and then if the king's anger rises and he says to you, why did you go so near the city to fight?

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So he's anticipating that David would somehow be angry and displeased with the news that was coming back.

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Did you not know that they would shoot from the wall? Who killed Abimelech, the son of Jerebisheth? Did not a woman cast an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died at Thebes?

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Why did you go so near the wall? Then you shall say, your servant Uriah the

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Hittite is dead also. All right, so he's anticipating that David would be displeased with this.

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So the messenger went, came and told David all that Joab had sent him to tell him. So the expectation was met.

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So he says, and Uriah the Hittite's dead. The messenger said, the men gained an advantage over us, came out against us in the field.

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We drove them back to the entrance of the gate. Then the archer shot at the servants from the wall, and some of the king's servants are dead, and your servant

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Uriah the Hittite is dead also. And so David now sends the messenger back with a message designed to basically comfort

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Joab. All right, again, this is all creating a false paper trail. Okay, thus you shall say to Joab, do not let this matter displease you, for the sword devours now one and now another.

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Strengthen your attack against the city, and overthrow it, and encourage him. So send encouraging words. Don't worry, Joab. Listen, that's what happens in war, man.

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That's what happens in war. So again, you'll note, nothing in the text even remotely indicates

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Bathsheba's awareness of this plot, her participation in it at all.

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And you just take the text at its surface matter and pull the Levitical texts in here from Leviticus, and you get a really good idea of what's really going on.

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So when the wife of Uriah heard, note that she eventually gets word that Uriah, her husband, was dead, it says she lamented over her husband.

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Take it at face value. So this is a pious woman who's keeping the finer details of the

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Mosaic Covenant. When she hears that her husband has died in war, take it at face value.

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She legitimately lamented. That's what the text says. And I find it really disturbing that there are commentaries that are written on this text that say, yeah, but she probably really wasn't lamenting.

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The law required her to mourn for seven days. So we're pretty much, she just did what was required and then went to be with David.

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That's not what the text says. The text says she lamented. And it's a bitter lament, the way the

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Hebrew works. She lamented over her husband, which may, you know, put yourself in her shoes.

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So she was summoned by David. David used her appearance at the palace in order to sexually take advantage of her.

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She becomes pregnant by David. She's in fear of being put to death because that's what the

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Mosaic Covenant demands. And now her husband has died in war.

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This woman's whole life has just come crumbling down.

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And the text says she lamented. Take it at face value. That's exactly what she did.

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These are not the behaviors of a woman who set out in order to ensnare the king and have the king fall in love with her for the purpose of adultery.

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If she was really looking to get out of her marriage, the text would more likely read, and she observed the mourning period that's required by the law, but was soon with David.

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And so you'll note, she's lamenting the death of her husband, and it says when the mourning was over.

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It doesn't say according to the law when the mourning was over, which means this may have lasted longer than the required seven days.

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It says David sent. She didn't send any word to David. David sent, and he brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and she bore him a son.

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So note that this has all already taken place. So David sends, she comes now, she becomes his wife, and she's already born the son.

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But note then the text here is quite important. The thing that David did, the thing that David had done displeased the

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Lord. It doesn't say the thing that they had done displeased the Lord. It says the thing that David had done displeased the

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Lord, and that's an important distinction because Leviticus requires that when it comes to adultery, both parties are to be put to death in order to purge the evil from among them.

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Okay, now note, I'm going to ask this question. If David is, and you'll note there's no separation of powers in the

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Davidic kingdom. David is the head of the executive branch. He's the head of the judiciary.

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He is president. He is lawmaker. He is judge.

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Who's higher in Israel than he is? Nobody, except for God.

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Okay, and so you'll note in David's matter, there's only one person who can judge the king, and that's

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God himself. And so in this particular matter then, God will intervene and God will render his judgment, and if Bathsheba were complicit in this, the expectation is that Bathsheba would also get part of the blame.

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But she doesn't, and all the Hebrew verbs are all masculine singular regarding what took place.

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And so you'll note then here, the thing that David had done. Okay, so this is a third person masculine singular verb, asah, the thing that he had done, not they, he had done, displeased the

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Lord. All right, so now we kind of got the time frame. At this point, we're almost, we may even be up to a year since this has all gone down.

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All right, because the child is already born. The child is already alive and breathing and kicking and all that kind of stuff.

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So Yahweh sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, now pay attention to the details of this particular parable, because Bathsheba shows up in this parable as one of the characters, and we'll see which one it is.

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So there were two men in a certain city, one rich, the other poor. All right, the rich man's

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David, the poor man is who? Uriah the Hittite. Okay, the rich man had very many flocks and herds.

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How many wives does David have at this point? Six, you know, right? But the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, that's

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Bathsheba. Okay, and ewe lamb is unmistakable because ewe lamb is a female lamb.

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It's not a male lamb, it's a female lamb. It's ewe lamb. All right, so this poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb.

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So note that Bathsheba shows up in this parable as a female sheep, which he had bought and brought it up.

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It grew up with him and with his children. It used to eat of the morsel and drink from his cup and lie in his arms.

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So notice how tenderly this fellow took care of his ewe lamb. Again, speaking to the character of Uriah, which means there was nothing going wrong in their marriage, at least that way.

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He had good character, not only towards his fellow soldiers and the king, he had great character and love and tenderness towards his wife.

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That's how the story is pictured. So it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man.

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He was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who had come to him. But he took the poor man's lamb, notice it says took, and that's the same imagery regarding David.

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He took Bathsheba to be his wife and prepared it for the man who had come to him.

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And then David's anger was kindled against the man. And he said, as Yahweh lives, the man who has done this deserves to die.

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And he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing because he had no pity. So you'll note then that Bathsheba, the ewe lamb, is portrayed as being devoured.

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Okay. And so if you want to place blame on Bathsheba, I would say, well, is this ewe lamb partly to blame for it being devoured and eaten because it looked too delicious?

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You know, is that the reason why it died? Yeah, you don't want to blame the ewe lamb here. So Nathan said, you are the man.

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And now note here, Nathan the prophet is speaking the judgment of God. God has judged

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David in this regard. And you'll note that all, not some, every ounce of blame falls on David.

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And all the verbs are masculine singular regarding what's taken place.

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You are the man. Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel. I anointed you king over Israel. I delivered you out of the hand of Saul.

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I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah.

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And if this were too little, I would add to you as much more. And now here it comes.

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Why have you despised masculine singular, bazithah, not y 'all, the two of you,

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Bathsheba and you, why have the two of you conspired? Why have the two of you despised the word of the

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Lord? No, it's masculine singular. Why have you despised the word of Yahweh to do what is evil in his sight?

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You have struck down, again, not the two of you, but only one of you.

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You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and you have taken his wife to be your wife, and you have killed singular him with the sword of the

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Ammonites. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the

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Hittite to be your wife. And again, despised here, bazithah is masculine singular.

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It's not the two of you have despised, it's you, David alone, have despised me, and you have taken the wife of Uriah.

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It doesn't say that she, the two of you conspired, you fell in love, you committed adultery, the two of you have concocted this pretense for marriage.

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No, you despised, you scorned, you've taken, you've killed, and all of them are singular.

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You've taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says Yahweh, behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house.

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I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sun.

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For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all of Israel and before the sun.

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And so David said to Nathan, I have sinned against Yahweh. And Nathan said,

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Yahweh also has put away your sin. And watch this, this is kind of the important feature. Remember, Leviticus requires both to die, but David alone receives an absolution, and he says, you shall not die.

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Note that if David were to remain impenitent, the expectation is that David himself solely probably would have died.

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But God has put away his sin and forgiven him, and you, not the two of you, you shall not die.

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And there's no hint that Bathsheba has done anything deserving of death in this matter. So nevertheless, because by this deed, and here it is, you have utterly scorned, our

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Hebrew here, again, second person, masculine, singular, not plural.

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You, singular, have scorned Yahweh, the child who is to be born to you shall die. Now other people point out and they say, well,

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Bathsheba was punished because her son died. The text says that the reason why the child that was born died is because of David's sin, not

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Bathsheba's. And I always like to point out then that Bathsheba, out of all of the wives that David had, which of them had the honor given to her by God to bear the child who would be in the line of the

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Messiah? And we note that in Matthew's genealogy, I'll pick up at verse five of chapter one of Matthew, Solomon, the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz, the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed, the father of Jesse, Jesse, the father of David, the king, and listen to this, and David, the father of Solomon, by the wife of Uriah.

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So you note that the person who says, well, she had to be complicit because God struck down her child.

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No, the text says the reason why the child was afflicted and died was because of David's sin. And you'll note then that Bathsheba is mentioned in the genealogy of Christ.

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And Uriah the Hittite is also honored here. And so the thing is, is that the fact that even

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Matthew says that she was the wife of Uriah really screams at this, that at no point in this did she ever seek to not be the wife of Uriah, ever.

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All the verbs are pointing to the guilt of David, every single one of them. And the washing that she engaged in in verse four was because David had a semen emission, and the law required that she bathe, and she did.

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And so everything here just screams that this woman truly was a victim. It truly was a victim.

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And you are not going beyond the text. In fact, you are faithful to the when you point these things out.

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And the people who try to make Bathsheba complicit in all of this, they are slandering her, utterly slandering her.

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And the texts all vindicate her and place 100 % of the blame on David.

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Note again, God is, God here, when he renders a judgment, his judgment is going to be spot on.

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The maker of heaven and earth, the one who knows the beginning from the end knows full well who was guilty in this matter.

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And he 100 % vindicates Bathsheba and places 100 % of the blame on a sin that requires two to tango.

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He places 100 % of the blame on David and none of it on her, and gives her the privilege of being the one who is the mother of Solomon who is in the line of Christ.

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So yeah, a little bit of a mini story there. But I gotta go.

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So my apologies, but I will end there. And if you have any questions,

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I would say I will entertain them maybe next week, but I'm up on my ability to stay here.

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I've got to pack up and head out. So all right, peace to you, brothers and sisters. We will see you next time.