Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Samuel · About this commentary
I Will Go to Him
2 Samuel 12:16-31
16 David therefore begged God for the child; and David fasted, and went in and lay all night on the ground. · WEB
Seven days on the ground, then a washed face and a meal — and a second son whom God names Beloved.
David therefore begged God for the child; and David fasted, and went in and lay all night on the ground 2 Samuel 12:16.
He has been told the child will die and he prays anyway, for seven days, refusing food and refusing to be raised from the floor. The sentence was announced by a prophet and David still treats God as free — who knows whether Yahweh will not be gracious to me? 2 Samuel 12:22. It is the same logic Nineveh's king used Jonah 3:9: while there is breath there is asking.
Then David arose from the earth, and washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothing; and he came into Yahweh's house, and worshiped 2 Samuel 12:20.
The servants expected collapse and got composure, in an order worth noticing: he washes, then worships, then eats. The worship comes before the meal and after the loss. His explanation is the plainest statement of grief's arithmetic in Scripture — while there was a chance, he fasted; now there is none, and fasting cannot reverse it 2 Samuel 12:23.
"But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me."
The last clause has comforted bereaved parents for three thousand years, and it is worth being careful about what it says and does not say. It says the child will not come back and that David is going where the child has gone — the common language of Scripture for death, where the dead sleep and wait Job 3:13 Psalms 13:3 John 11:11–14. It is not a claim about a conscious reunion in the moment of dying; it is a bereaved man's certainty that death is a road he will travel too, and that the child is at the end of it. The hope Scripture attaches to that road is resurrection 1 Thessalonians 4:13–16, and David's comfort is real without needing more than it says.
She bore a son, and he called his name Solomon. Yahweh loved him; and he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet, and he named him Jedidiah, for Yahweh's sake 2 Samuel 12:24–25.
David comforts Bathsheba — the first time the account records him doing anything for her — and the son born of the marriage is given a second name by God through the same prophet who brought the indictment. Jedidiah means beloved of Yahweh. The house under sentence is not abandoned; the next king of Israel is born into it, and the covenant of chapter seven holds exactly as it promised 2 Samuel 7:14–15.
The chapter closes at Rabbah, where Joab has taken the city and pointedly summons the king to finish it so it will not be called by a general's name 2 Samuel 12:28. David comes, takes the crown, and puts the population to forced labor. The war that framed chapter eleven ends, and the king is back where kings go out — a year late.
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