Did God Really Strike the Child Dead?

2 Samuel 12:13-14: "Then David said to Nathan, 'I have sinned against the LORD.' Nathan replied, 'The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have made the enemies of the LORD show utter contempt, the son born to you will die.'"

2 Samuel 11 marks the transition in David's life from triumph to tragedy. David had been the recipient of God's Divine blessing, which brought the king continued success in all that he did (see 1 Samuel 18:5,15,28; 2 Samuel 5:10). By the time of the above mentioned verse, David had expanded his kingdom by defeating the Philistines, the Moabites, the Arameans, and the Ammonites. Many of these neighboring nations subjected themselves to David's authority in the region, for God had blessed the Israelite king and made him a powerful and prosperous ruler.

Tragically, David's prosperity and popularity would lead to his egregious sin with another man's wife. While his army was away fighting the Ammonites, David stayed at home in Jerusalem. One evening, he awakened from his bed to walk around the roof of the palace, and as he strolled around the top, he noticed a married woman bathing. Thinking himself to be above any law or any one, including God, David violated the marital covenant that this woman, Bathsheba, had made with her husband, Uriah. Then to cover up the sin of adultery, David had Bathsheba's husband Uriah killed so that he could take her to be his own wife.

God intervened by sending the prophet, Nathan, to address the king for his sins of murder and adultery. The prophet approached the king with an illustrative story of a rich man, who, despite his great number of livestock, took from a poor man his choicest possession, one ewe lamb, to be slaughtered for his dinner. This taking was not out of necessity, but out of arrogant disdain for the man less fortunate than he.

David was aroused with indignation at this story, and he decreed that this rich man would be subject to payment four times over for such a sin of arrogance and lack of pity. David was so angered at Nathan's account that he suggested that such a sin was deserving of death.

When Nathan pointed at David and declared him the arrogant man, David in turn acknowledged his sin. And although the sin was forgiven, the punishment for his royal edict was still to be carried out. Four times over, David would see the loss of a son, first with the death of the child conceived through adultery, second with the death of Amnon, then Absalom, then Adonijah. The sentence of death for David's child with Bathsheba was the consequence of the royal curse that David decreed against himself. God was carrying out the punishment that David decreed for this sin. When one begins to see the horrific deaths that the older sons experienced, one can see Divine benevolence in taking the child early before such a similar fate.

God's judgment was the result of the king's contempt for the covenant of marriage, which caused the enemies of the Lord "show utter contempt" (2 Sam. 12:14); still, the death of the child was the result of the king's decree of a four-fold retribution for the sin. From this event forward, David would see the pain of "the sword never departing from his house (2 Sam. 12:10).