From: (Les Brown) Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian,aus.religion Subject: Re: Can any one explain??? Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 09:24:16 GMT wrote in aus.religion.christian: >Hello Les, > >So how do you explain the following? > >2 Sam 12:7 Nathan then said to David, "You are the >man! Thus says the LORD God of Israel, 'It is I who >anointed you king over Israel and it is I who delivered >you from the hand of Saul. > >2 Sam 12:9 'Why have you despised the word of the LORD >by doing evil in His sight? You have struck down Uriah the >Hittite with the sword, have taken his wife to be your wife, >and have killed him with the sword of the sons of Ammon. > >The LORD found what David to to be EVIL, judged him and >punished him for it. > >2 Sam 12:10 'Now therefore, the sword shall never depart >from your house, because you have despised Me and have >taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.' > >2 Sam 12:13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned >against the LORD." And Nathan said to David, "The LORD >also has taken away your sin; you shall not die. > >Even David admitted that he had sinned. Jewish scholars have long acknowledged what you think is a sin and their reply is as follows: 12:9 - To do what is evil - Heb "la-asot hara" Rebi remarked: This evil is different from all other evils in the torah. For concerning all other evils it is written "and he did" (v'ya'as hara) whilst here it is written "to do" (la-asot) [This indicates] that he only wished to do but did not actually do it. (Talmud Bavli,Shabbath 56a) David was ready to commit adultery (but did not). As it turned out, Uriah died and his divorce became retro-actively valid. Proof that David did not commit an act of adultery comes from Nathan's rebuke of David for marrying Bathsheba after causing her husband's death, but fails to accuse him of the (more serious) prior act of having relations with her while she was still married to Uriah. If David was actually innocent of transgression, why does not Scripture indicate this clearly instead of merely intimating it? Rabbeinu Nissim provides a two-fold answer. (1) G-d expects more of the righteous that He does of others. Hence King David's transgression was equivalent to another man's sin. (2) A major lesson to be derived from the incident of David and Bath-sheba is the enormous power of repentance. By leading us to the conclusion that David had actually committed adultery and murder, Scripture indicates that a sincere program of repentance is capable of removing even the grossest of sins - Drashot Ha-Ran, Drasha 6'. (All the above copied from the Judaica Press "The Book of Samuel 2", pages 318-319, 325-326) > > >>How could we (or you) honour the man who wrote most of Psalms if we >>found him guilty of immorality? >> >He repented. He was a man like us. Yes, he did repent. But what it shows for the Jew is that no-one can remove his sins for him, only he can and only by repentance. What the message should be for Christians is that for what need is Jesus when repentance removes all sin? Les Brown