The Limits of Sovereignty (Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost)

Teresa Morgan and Molly Zahn discuss parables, punishment, and kingly power in 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a. The text is appointed for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary.

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Teresa Morgan is McDonald Agape Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Yale Divinity School. Molly Zahn is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School.

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Transcript

Voiceover Voice:

However much you are chosen and blessed by God, you can, and you probably will still mess up at some point.

Helena Martin:

This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. Join us each week as two Yale Divinity School professors look at an upcoming text from the Revised Common Lectionary.

I think it’s time for me to announce that the podcast is actually coming to a close in a few months. When Advent comes this December, we’ll be back in Revised Common Lectionary Year C, which is the first year we covered when the podcast came out back in 2021. So, the last new episode will come out at the end of November, and that will complete the three-year cycle.

But stick around; we’ve got a lot more great conversations for you before we’re done!

This episode, we have Molly Zahn, Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible, and Teresa Morgan, McDonald Agape Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity. They’re discussing 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a, which is appointed for Track 1 of the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 13 in Year B. Here’s the text.

[2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a]

When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she made lamentation for him. When the mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb that he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare and drink from his cup and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.” Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity.”

Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your bosom and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah, and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. Thus says the Lord: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and in broad daylight.” David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan said to David, “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.

Teresa Morgan:

 I really have a beef with this reading, you know, because here we have a good length admittedly, story, nice little parable, but it comes in at the end of quite a complicated series of events. And it also leaves out at the end of the parable, what happens afterwards, which is also important. It's a funny little reading. Can you just remind me what happened before this reading started?

Molly Zahn:

Sure. So, at the beginning of the reading we hear that the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba, hears that her husband was dead. And then David sends and brings her, and she became his wife and bore him a son. In the previous chapter, we've learned that while Uriah, Bathsheba's husband was away fighting David's wars for him, David glimpsed his wife and was attracted to her and basically kidnapped her and brought her to the palace and had sex with her and sent her home, and then tried to cover his tracks by trying to make Uriah come home on a little leave so that he could have relations with his wife and therefore have some plausible claim of paternity to this child.  And Uriah being a faithful servant says, well, no, I'm not going to go home. I'm fighting your war. I'm busy. And David feels that he therefore has no choice but to get Uriah killed. So, this is all very sorted, right? And we only hear, the lectionary reading opens with only the briefest reminder of those events. But then, that is, those are the actions, of course, on which Nathan bases this parable of the poor man with the little ewe lamb. There's a long backstory before we get to the actual reading for today.

Teresa Morgan:

It is an awful story, really, isn't it? And it is not the only one, of course, in the Hebrew Bible. There are a lot of stories of people who are chosen by God, and blessed by God, and anointed by God really screwing up. Really doing terrible things. One lesson, I suppose, the positive lesson, I suppose, I try to draw from that is that however much you are chosen and blessed by God and are trying to do God's work, you can, and you probably will still mess up at some point. You know, to err is human. And people, even the best people, and it's true in the New Testament, of course, of Jesus’ disciples, even the best people mess up and make mistakes and fail God. The really hopeful lesson, of this story and also of many New Testament stories is that that's not a deal breaker in our relationship with God. You know, in Christian terms, before the end time, before the last judgment, there is always time to repent, to think better of the way that you behave, to change the way that you behave, to do better. Human failure is not a deal breaker. I sometimes talk about it as the adequacy of imperfect trust or imperfect faith. You know, remarkably, imperfect people are good enough for God to work with. Not to be complacent about it, but it's something.

Molly Zahn:

In a way, God has no choice. [laughter] God, this is the way we are. And according to the Bible, God has some responsibility for that too. And there's a long tradition of thinking about why that's the case, right? But this story is really set up to highlight that David should have known better. So, Nathan's parable, which, of course, prompts David's outrage, David’s anger is greatly kindled against this fictional man who stole the one small bit of property of the poor man. You know, Nathan is making the point that David should have known precisely what he was doing. As a side note, you know, we could say something about the objectification of women or women as property in this story…

Teresa Morgan:

We could.

Molly Zahn: 

…but that's a broader sort of framework that much of the Bible operates from.

Teresa Morgan:

But it's also making a point, I suppose, that David may not do what he wants. And in this world, this ancient world of the Near East, that's quite a striking point to make, isn't it?

Molly Zahn:

It is, especially with regard to, of course, throughout the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, there are many different main characters that are not always so special politically, I guess. The patriarchs are shepherds and nomads, but David is the king. And David in lots of ways, you know, the Bible does depict David in the classical terms of an ancient Near Eastern monarch. Which really involved the king functioning on earth as representative of the God. As chosen by the God, and really as assuming that whatever he did was in fact the expression of God's will. And so, Israelite monarchy in many ways continues some of those threads, but absolutely never loses the emphasis on God's sovereignty. It is Yahweh who is the sovereign of Israel, and the king cannot do whatever he wants. And the king, you know, when he acts in ways that are, that really compromise Yahweh's sovereignty in the construction of a moral order in this case, that he's not immune from punishment and the conditionality of the promise to the kings that you will reign. It's an unconditional promise in some ways when you read 2 Samuel 7. But there's always this other undercurrent within the text where you do not get to act however you want. You will be punished. It culminates with the loss of the monarchy at the end of the book of Kings. But here in a more individual sense, the initial oracle against David is actually that it's implied that he will die. Even though it's phrased in a very reversal, so in verse 11, “I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house, and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor.” And this is exactly what happens as we read the rest of the story. These conflicts with David's sons and the succession narrative. 

Another part, you know, another reason this selection is a little irritating in terms of its boundaries is that we don't hear that David confesses his sin and Nathan says, now the Lord has put away your sin and you shall not die. But the child that he has conceived with Bathsheba does die as a result of this wrongdoing. And, as horrific as that sort of sense of transgenerational punishment is to us, as much as that is not in line with our sensibilities, it is an expression of that idea that you cannot just do whatever you want and get away unpunished. And so in the sense that once you are in the worldview where a king's, a man's wife and children are sort of an extension of his person, the loss of this child is a severe punishment of David. 

Teresa Morgan:

And that tension between worldly power and God's power and authority, of course, has gone on through Christian tradition and Christian thinking and continues to this day, doesn't it? And Christianity, like Judaism, has always come down on the side of God's ultimate sovereignty, but not without a tussle very often. You can see it in the Emperor Constantine's understanding of his relationship with God, which I think in Constantine's eyes was very much that God was there to support him in what he wanted to do. Not the same for the Christian bishops around him. You can see it in the relationship between King Charles I of England and God and his bishops. Charles thought that divine right meant that he was pretty much right in what he, whatever he wanted to do. And those around him very much didn't think that, or some of them didn't. You can see it to this day when political powers and authorities invoke God in support of their own agenda, and there is often pushback from churches saying actually, you're not above God's law.  Nobody is above God's law. But it goes on being an issue, doesn't it? And goes on being a tension between divine authority and human authority. 

I also love that this is a parable, you know, whatever else is problematic in this story, I love that this is a parable because I'm fascinated by parables and fables and all kinds of wisdom literature really. And of course, there are not that many parables in the Hebrew Bible are there? There are a lot in the New Testament and it's one of the slight mysteries. Why? Rabbinic cultures a lot in later Judaism, even from the ancient world so it's one of the slight mysteries why parables seem to become so much more common in the Roman period than they were before. But there are one or two parables in the Hebrew Bible, and this is, I suppose it must be the longest and most developed probably. They're very fascinating things, aren't they? Because parables, like fables, in the Gentile world, they're always told for a particular purpose on a particular occasion. They're always kind of given a moral. But they never have only one moral. And you can see this where we've got more than one version of a parable in Christian literature but also where we have more than one version say of an Aesopic fable. In the contiguous Gentile world, every time a story appears it'll have a different moral. So, there's so much to unpack in a story like this and that gives us a license not only to read this as a story about David and Bathsheba, but also a story we can apply to ourselves and our own life. We have a license to reread this and think, okay, well, who do we sympathize with? Why do we sympathize? What would we do in this situation?

Molly Zahn:

So, in a sense, Nathan's parable is secondary to the entire story as a parable for us in exploring the limits of sovereignty, the limits of power. How humans, act knowing, you know, act in moral ways knowing what God wants of them.

Teresa Morgan:

They're a wonderfully fertile genre.

Helena Martin:

Thanks for listening. You can visit our website for more Bible study resources: YaleBibleStudy.org.

Chapter, Verse, and Season is a production of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. It’s produced by: Creator and Managing Editor, Joel Baden; Production Manager, Kelly Morrissey; Associate Producer, Aidan Stoddart; and I’m your Host and Executive Producer, Helena Martin. And our theme music is by Calvin Linderman.

We’ll be back with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.