David's Parable- 2 Sam 12

While recently re-watching the third "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, I was struck by the role that deceit played in the film. Every character moved about with secret motives and was constantly trying to manipulate others around them to accomplish those hidden goals. Yet, deceit is not simply something that pirates take part in, but it also plays a significant role in the Old Testament. From Jacob to Tamar, Simeon to Absalom, many of Israel's ancestors rely on trickery from time to time.

Most of us have heard the story about David and Bathsheba. David sees her bathing one day and his lust leads him to kill her husband and take Bathsheba as his own wife. However, David does not get away. Instead, the prophet Nathan tells David a parable and then points out that David is the villain in the story whom David had condemned himself.

While popular interpretations of this story argue that David believed Nathan's story was an actual legal case and that David foolishly missed the point or was tricked, Jeremy Schipper offers a different interpretation. Schipper argues that David recognized the story as a parable, but misinterpreted (either accidentally or intentionally) the different parts of the parable. Nathan's intention and David's interpretations according to Schipper are given below:

NATHAN                                                   DAVID
Lamb- Bathsheba                                       Lamb- Uriah
Poor man- Uriah                                        Poor man- Bathsheba
Traveler- n/a (perhaps David's lust)            Traveler- David
Rich man- David                                        Rich man- Joab

This misinterpretation by David seems plausible because Nathan does not address the identity of the traveler and because both Uriah and the lamb are the ones killed. According to Schipper, David attempted to use Nathan's parable as a means of shifting the blame for Uriah's murder to someone else. In particular, David used the story to denounce Joab, his general, as a "son of death" who kills on behalf of another (the traveler/David). Thus, David condemns this action in an attempt to prove that his reign is not built upon assassination plots. However, as Nathan quickly corrects, the point goes beyond the murder to the adultery with Bathsheba.

Whether we accept Schipper's proposal or not remains a matter of debate. However, it does cast David in a new light. Instead of a fool who gets tricked, David is a continued schemer in the likeness of ancestors like Jacob. Unfortunately, his scheming here is an attempt to continue covering his sins.