2 Samuel 12:1-14

NATHAN’S PARABLE AGAINST DAVID, 2 Samuel 12:1-14.

“The year had passed; the dead Uriah was forgotten; the child of guilt was born in the royal house, and loved with all the passionate tenderness of David’s paternal heart. Suddenly the prophet Nathan appears before him. He comes as if to claim redress for a wrong in humble life. It was the true mission of the prophets, as champions of the oppressed, in the courts of kings. It was the true prophetic spirit that spoke through Nathan’s mouth. The apologue of the rich man and the ewe lamb has, besides its own intrinsic tenderness, a supernatural elevation, which is the best sign of true revelation. It ventures to disregard all particulars, and is content to aim at awakening the general sense of outraged justice. It fastens on the essential guilt of David’s sin not its sensuality, or its impurity, so much as its meanness and selfishness. It rouses the king’s conscience by that teaching described in 1 Corinthians 14:24-25, as specially characteristic of prophecy, making manifest his own sin in the indignation which he has expressed at the sin of another.” Stanley.