Friday 24 January 2025

Psalm 62

Background
This week we have been reading in 2 Samuel 11-12 about King David sinning against God and the consequences. Yesterday David accepted that he had sinned.

There are three things about the way the story is narrated in today's verses that might give us pause for thought. The first is the very different culture and mindset which the writers inhabit. They believed that the illness and death of the child that David fathered was sent by God as a direct punishment for David’s sin: "The Lord struck the child" (v. 15). This assumption is neither questioned nor explained; it is just how things are.

Secondly, the story is told exclusively from the perspective of King David. There is no expression of pity for the suffering infant. The fear and grief of the child’s mother are never mentioned. The story focuses on David the king: his life, his behaviour, his choices, and his journey towards understanding himself and his relationship with God. David has behaved as though he could control life and death, and that the consequences of his actions could be managed and contained. Now he finds that even though he is king, life and death are beyond his power to manipulate.

Thirdly, David's behaviour reverses the normal customs of his time. While the child is ill, he weeps, fasts and prays. When he discovers that the child is dead, he gets washed, eats a good meal, and gets on with normal life. His servants are confused, but David is clear: "While the child was still alive I fasted and wept; for I said, ‘who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me, and the child may live.’ But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me." (vs 22-23)

The theologian Walter Brueggemann sees this behaviour as evidence that King David has learned a profound lesson about his humanity: he has learned the power of grief, the finality of death, and the ability "to take life as it comes not with indifference but with freedom, not with callousness but with buoyancy." (Walter Brueggemann, The Trusted Creature, 1969)

To Ponder:

• We would never think that the life of an innocent child would be taken by God as a punishment for a parent’s sin. But in what ways do we question or even blame God when things go horribly wrong in our lives or in our world?
• What might we learn from this story of King David about the ways power and vulnerability are located in each of us?
• David models for us how to grieve in the face of loss, and how to let go and move on. Do you agree?

Prayer
Holy God, you go on loving us in hope and in grief, in life and in death. Help us to live with the reality of suffering, but in the profound knowledge that death does not have the final word. Amen.

Bibles Notes author: The Revd Val Reid
Val Reid is a newly retired presbyter who lives in Salisbury. She is exploring what ministry looks like in this new season of her life and relishes time for choral singing, wild swimming and walks in the New Forest.