Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 220 · August 8
Thou Shalt Not Die
“And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the LORD. And Nathan said unto David, The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die.”
Here is the objection to this verse at full strength. A king arranges the death of one of his own soldiers to cover up what he did with that soldier's wife. Months later a prophet exposes him with a story about a poor man's lamb. The king admits, "I have sinned against the LORD," and he is told the matter is settled: "The LORD also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die." Uriah is still dead. A court that acted like that would be called corrupt, and rightly.
Yet the chapter never makes it cheap. Before the pardon, Nathan says, "the sword shall never depart from thine house," and "I will take thy wives before thine eyes." "For thou didst it secretly: but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun." Every one of those words came true, and David lived through all of it. After the pardon comes the line that has broken more readers than anything else in the book: "the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die." David fasted and lay on the ground night after night, because, as he said later, "Who can tell whether GOD will be gracious to me, that the child may live?" On the seventh day the child died. A reason is given, and the reason has never made a funeral easier for anyone.
Think of a driver who crashes his car through a neighbour's garden wall. The court may cancel the fine and clear his record, and the wall still lies in pieces, waiting to be rebuilt. Those are two different things: the record, and the damage. David is given the first in one sentence from Nathan: "thou shalt not die." The second takes the rest of his life. It is worked out in public, and painfully, as the sword Nathan spoke of comes into David's own house through his own sons.
Lord, You put away David's sin in a single sentence, and You did not take away the funeral. We would like those two facts to sit quietly together, and they will not, so we will not pretend otherwise. But we will not let the second become a reason to doubt the first. Say over us what You gave Nathan to say. And where the damage is still standing, in homes we know, place us there to help carry it, and not only to explain it. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 220 is Cleansed from All Sin (1 John 1:7).