God Must Laugh

The stories of David’s rise, recorded in 2 Samuel have been some of my favorites ever since high school. Digging through them today, I found some new stuff.

I’ve heard a ton of sermons about David and Bathsheba, but most of them fail to mention something that I think is important. David rose to power as the leader of a small but loyal group of guerrilla fighters. These men had either served with him under King Saul, or they joined him in the desert once Saul turned on David. Their running battles transformed them into a tightly knit lethal force. The best of these were called the mighty men, the Thirty. Within the Thirty, there were five of special note. The head of David’s bodyguard, the head of the Thirty, and the Three. That’s it. The Three. How butt kicking do you have to be to have your name be “The Three”? These five men had won great renown during David’s rise to power through feats of bravery and prowess. The head of the bodyguard was given almost as much honor as the three, and the head of the thirty was held in equal esteem with the three, but no one had more. There’s a cool story about one of their exploits, but I’ll let you look it up yourself if you’re interested. The thing most people miss in all this warrior stuff is the last name on the list. Uriah the Hittite is one of the Thirty.

In fact, that may have been why Uriah’s house was close enough to the palace for David to look down into Uriah’s backyard. The thirty were probably given homes close to the palace as a way of honoring them, and as a kind of instant bodyguard should something go wrong. It also helps explain why Uriah acts so nobly, refusing to go home to his wife while his brothers in arms are still in the field. He chooses instead to sleep in the gateway of the king’s palace. Uriah is living out the code of the elite unit that helped bring David to power. So, David didn’t just sleep with someone’s wife; he abused the honor he had bestowed on one of his most loyal warriors. And when Uriah was too noble to fall for David’s scheme to cover his infidelity, David ordered Joab, leader of the army, to withdraw, leaving Uriah exposed.

Remember all those deeds of bravery and valor that earned the Thirty (and especially the Three) their high honor? Well most of them involved standing firm in the face of overwhelming numbers while everyone around them ran away. In fact, Abishai, commander of the Thirty, saved David’s own life once in just such a manner. Notice that David doesn’t send the orders to Abishai, commander of Uriah’s elite unit; he sends the orders to Abishai’s brother Joab, general of the army. At Joab’s signal, the grunts run away, and true to the warrior code of the Thirty, Uriah stands firm. In the past, these displays of bravery had motivated the army to rally and rejoin the fight. But this time, they just reform and wait. I wonder if Uriah ever looked back and saw them watching. I wonder if he realized he had been betrayed. I wonder if he realized that his own honor and loyalty had been turned against him by the man to whom he had dedicated his life, the man for whom he had suffered and bled so many times. I hope not. I hope he was too busy fighting, but I don’t know.

I wonder what happened to the Thirty after that? You know they found out. They had to find out. And they would understand exactly what it meant. I wonder if that has anything to do with the instability of David’s reign in later years. When Absalom rose up in rebellion against his father, where were the Thirty? Where were the Three?

Here’s another little nuance. Most sermons I’ve heard on this make a big deal about David choosing to stay home instead of going off to war with the rest of his men. Remember how Abishai, leader of the Thirty, came to David’s rescue once and saved his life? Abishai killed the last of Goliath’s brothers. Remember Goliath? The giant Philistine? The one a much younger David had killed with a sling and a stone? Goliath had four brothers, all of them huge, all of them Philistine warriors. Israel in general, and David especially, would never be safe as long as these four lived. But rather than demanding glory or compensation for himself and his men after such an important victory, Abishai and the rest of David’s warriors vowed that he would no longer go to war with them and put his own life at risk. They didn’t ask him. They didn’t make him promise. They made a vow. “Never again will you go out with us to battle, so that the lamp of Israel will not be extinguished.” So, in a way, the Thirty undid themselves. By excluding David from their marches, they rejected him as a warrior and made him a king. Perhaps this is where the first crack really began in the foundation of David’s reign. The Thirty failed to trust that God would keep him safe, and rather than arguing with them or over-ruling them as he had done before, David agreed.