And David said to Nathan, I have sinned against Jehovah. And Nathan said to David, Jehovah has also put away thy sin thou shalt not die.
David had hidden his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah until God sent the prophet Nathan to confront him. This verse is the turning point: David confesses, and the answer comes at once — a pardon that does not cancel the consequences.
David's confession names the Lord. One writer marks the gap between being ashamed that people know and seeing that the act is evil before God.
Nathan speaks only one phrase, "You are the man," to convict David. David too says only one thing in God's presence: "I have sinned against the Lord." When a soul has seen this it has taken a tremendous step forward... Those we have offended may forgive our sins against them. We may make amends in some measure for the sins we commit against ourselves. But what can we say when we have sinned against the Lord? One person says, "I have sinned," because he is ashamed that men can see it. It is quite another thing when a person is convicted that what he has done is evil in the sight of the Lord.
Others in Scripture said the same words with no change of heart.
Pharaoh could say, "I have sinned this time," when the thunder and hail frightened him and he wanted them stopped. Yet he had not repented. He sinned still more and hardened his heart once the thunder stopped... Saul said to Samuel, "I have sinned." But he revealed the state of his heart when he added, "Yet honor me now before the elders of my people." ... In none of these cases was there real repentance. David's case is quite different. He was not thinking about his reputation with men and how to save it. He saw and confessed what his guilt was before God.
The pardon is startling. Under the law, David's case had only one outcome.
"I have sinned against the Lord." A short, real, but solemn confession. It admits that he was in God's hands and deserved only death for his offences... God's mercy could reach a man guilty of blood. The law could not meet the case. It demanded David's death on two counts, adultery and murder. He could offer no sacrifice, for he had sinned deliberately and defiantly. There was nothing for him but the sovereign mercy of God. Could that mercy reach him? God did not leave him in doubt for a moment. The prophet did not have to go away and wait before he could assure him of pardon.
Nathan speaks in the past tense, not the future.
Having produced this thorough conviction of sin, God does not keep His poor guilty servant waiting. Again He speaks only one sentence to him: "The Lord also has put away your sin." He does not say the Lord will put it away. He says the Lord has put it away. He had dealt with His servant's sin beforehand. He had made provision, so that the sin was gone from David and no longer came up before God. This is what we find at the cross of Christ.
He received no sign, no sacrifice, and no second announcement — and he did not ask for one.
On what could the convicted man rest? On the word of God. He had nothing else. That word was spoken once and, as far as we read, never repeated. Does God have to speak twice? David did not ask that. He heard, and he rejoiced in the mercy of his God... He did not cross-examine the prophet to make sure there was no mistake... Many of us have acted very differently. Many still do — slow to receive the gospel message, slow to bow to the free proclamation of forgiveness.
The same visit brings pardon and announces the child's death. One writer names two principles at work.
Grace meets this confession, as he hears, "The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die." But grace and government are two different principles. The first says, "The Lord has put away your sin"; the second can only say, "The child who is born to you shall surely die" — for the wheels of God's governmental chariot never stop, and "whatever one sows, that will he also reap."
The pardon rests on what God has done, not on David.
"The Lord has put away your sin," the prophet declared. God, who alone could do it, had done it. David could not put it away; Nathan could not either. God could, and did. Then it could never be charged to David.
- Convicted — one phrase from Nathan, "You are the man," reached David's conscience.
- Confessed — David owned the sin as against the Lord; Pharaoh and Saul said the same words with unchanged hearts.
- Cleared — the law demanded his death twice over, and no sacrifice covered his case. Only sovereign mercy was left, and it came at once.
- Completed — Nathan says God has already put the sin away; the provision was made beforehand, and one writer points to the cross.
- Chastened — the pardon stood, but the child still died; grace and government run on different tracks.
Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of Jehovah to blaspheme, even the child that is born to thee shall certainly die.
The prophet Nathan has just told David that God has put his sin away and he will not die — then in the same breath he announces the child's death. Free pardon and public government run side by side here, because David's sin handed the world an argument against God.
A note on wording: the ESV says David "utterly scorned the LORD." Older translations read "you have given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme." The writers quoted below use that older wording.
The same chapter holds both a pardon and a sentence. One writer sets the two side by side:
Grace meets this confession, as he hears, "The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die." But grace and government are two different principles. Grace says, "The Lord has put away your sin." Government can only say, "The child also that is born to you shall surely die." The wheels of God's governmental chariot never stop, and "whatever a man sows that shall he also reap."
Forgiveness here is complete. What follows is not God re-opening the case:
Full and everlasting forgiveness, however, does not exempt those who receive it from God's dealings with them in government. David had to experience that, right to the end of his life. The child born to him by Uriah's wife must die, and the sword would never depart from his house... Governmental dealing, however, ends with this life. God's favour to us, based on the sacrifice of Christ, lasts for ever.
God's reason for the sentence is not the sin alone, but what it gave His enemies:
Such is the consequence that the world draws from our faults. Satan uses each of our sins to turn people's hearts openly against God and against Christ. Look, the world says, what their religion leads them to do! — and God is blasphemed. Satan stirs up desires in a Christian for two reasons: to be able to accuse him, and to turn those who watch his fall against Christ, so that they may not turn to Him for salvation.
The damage did not end with David's generation:
To this day unbelievers and people who reject the Word of God point to David's sin and blaspheme. Yet the very things they sneer at are the things they practise.
David was not a private man. His position made his sin weigh far more:
David's sin had openly defied God's law. By his own example it loosened the moral duty the people owed their God. David was God's anointed and God's representative in government, yet he had trampled one of God's basic laws underfoot. So the anointed king had become the guiltiest sinner in his kingdom.
The punishment matched the sin — and then answered it in the open:
Note the solemn principle of retribution here, seen as often in real life as in scripture. Our sin always gives the form of our chastening... "You did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun." Here God's way is contrast, where before it was likeness. Either one marks His ways. Each shows how deeply sin deceives man, and how God hates it for ever.
The innocent child bears the blow, not the guilty father — the hardest edge of the verse:
Death does not strike David, the guilty one, but his cherished son. God's judgment must fall on the king's house at once, where everyone can see it. The child falls sick. The poor father is in anguish, and he fasts and pleads with God. If it were possible, may God show him grace! No, discipline must run its course.
Nor was this the whole of it:
The death of the child, however, was but the first sound of the storm of judgement about to burst upon David's house. He might fast, pray, humble himself, and lie face down in the dust, but the child must die.
The story does not end in ruin. David bowed to the sentence and came out the other side:
While the child lived, he pleaded with the Lord for it. He did not despise the chastening of the Lord; he felt it very deeply. But when the child is dead, he accepts God's will in full submission... While we pass under such discipline for our sin, we are aware of no light and no talking with Him. Still, we may come out of it with renewed strength and power, as David did... God shows him that, however unbending He is in righteousness, His love and interest in him are unchanged.
In David's answer to his servants, commentators find real hope:
The child had gone where David himself would follow, and where he would find him: in this he certainly expresses the comfort that remains for him of meeting in eternity the baby of a few days' existence upon earth.
- Pardoned — "You shall not die" is pure grace. God put David's sin away the moment he confessed it, and never charged it against him again.
- Governed — pardon does not cancel consequence. Grace and government are two different principles. The wheels of government never stop.
- Exposed — David sinned in secret, so God judged him in the open. Our sin always gives the form of our chastening.
- Blasphemed — God gives the reason: the sin gave His enemies occasion to blaspheme. Unbelievers still point at David and sneer. Satan uses a believer's fall to turn onlookers away from Christ.
- Restored — David bowed to God's will and rose with renewed strength, comforted that he would go to his child. God is unbending in righteousness, and His love never changes.