When we’re in the middle of doing something that we know is wrong, it is so easy to block our conscience and think everything will be okay. But there are always consequences to our actions. They can be good consequences or bad ones, but what we do affects those around us, whether we like it or not. David and Bathsheba found this out the hard way. You would think, given the fact that David was a man after God’s own heart, that he would have known better. But Christians (or in David’s case – believers in Yahweh) are not perfect people, just forgiven sinners.
So after their night of an illicit affair, Bathsheba returned to her home. Scripture doesn’t tell us whether they saw each other again. But whether they had a several month affair or a one night stand, the result was pregnancy. Bathsheba sent word to David that she was going to have his baby.
At this point, David could have confessed his sin. When he called Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, home from battle, David could have confessed to the man and begged his forgiveness. He could have asked Uriah to have mercy on Bathsheba and keep the child as his own. The law commanded that adulterers be stoned, but if they had gone to the Lord and confessed immediately, God may have shown them mercy and it would have gone no further. (We can surmise this because God eventually did show them mercy.)
But David was living in denial. He would not own up to his mistakes, and he was tumbling headlong into a pit so deep, piling one sin on top of the other. He did indeed send for Bathsheba’s husband, but he had no plans to admit his guilt. Instead he wined and dined Uriah trying twice to get Uriah to go home and sleep with his wife, making him believe the child was his own.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive…”
And David was trying to deceive Uriah, as well as the whole nation.
But he was deceiving himself most of all.
