In 1 Samuel 13:14, Samuel says God will replace Saul with “a man after [God’s] heart” and the author of 1 Kings 15:5 wrote “For David had done what was right in the eyes of the LORD and had not failed to keep any of the LORD’s commands all the days of his life–except in the case of Uriah the Hittite.”
Based on these two verses, one could think that David came in just one small step below Jesus when it comes to human perfection, but is this true?
Although David was a valiant warrior, throughout his life his character left much to be desired.
We see early in his life that David seemed to enjoy killing (much like Samson before him). When King Saul offered David his daughter Michal in exchange for the skins off 100 enemy penises, David and his men went out and killed 200 men from Philistia and brought the skin off their penises to the king.
We know from the psalms he wrote that David recognized God as powerful and good and that he feared God, but we also know that he kept a household idol in his home (1 Samuel 19:11-17). David also wrote psalms recounting the curses he prayed over those he disliked–both foreigners and fellow Israelites–in which he asked God to humiliate and kill them.
David was also a womanizer of the worst sort. He had numerous wives and concubines (slave-girls or prisoners who were taken as sexual partners) and more children than he could keep track of.
In spite of the fact that he had numerous wives and concubines, he ordered a married woman, Bathsheba, to be brought to his palace so he could have sex with her. (He likely raped her.) Later, when he learned that he had gotten her pregnant, he ordered the death of her husband Uriah (a soldier in David’s army) and then he took her as another wife. The penalty for both of these crimes was death, but apparently kings were above the law.
He did absolutely nothing when he learned that one of his sons raped one of his daughters—possibly because he had done the same with Bathsheba. His inaction caused a different son, Absalom, to kill his half-brother rapist. (Years later, Absalom slept with ten of his father’s concubines and was killed for trying to take the throne from his father.)
Finally, when David was very old and unable to feel warm at night, his advisers, knowing his taste for women, found the most beautiful young virgin in the land and brought her to the palace so David could snuggle with her to warm himself. Although the writer of Kings tells us David did not have sex with her, this story is extremely disturbing and disgusting, especially considering Bathsheba, the wife he supposedly loved more than all the others, could easily have crawled into bed with David. (After David’s death, his son Adonijah asked Solomon, the new king, if he could have this woman as his wife. Solomon was so enraged by this request that he ordered his half-brother to be killed that very day.)
David is famous for rising from shepherd to king, for killing Goliath with a stone, for his military conquests that unified Judah and Israel, and for writing some of the psalms. But aside from the fact that he refrained from killing Saul when he had opportunities and that he cared for Saul’s crippled son after Saul’s death, there is almost nothing to suggest he was a kind, compassionate, or decent person.
I realize David lived in a time when idol worship, killing enemies, and using and abusing women was considered normal, but as Christians we must not put David on a pedestal and attempt to justify his sinful lifestyle. Instead, we must judge his life by the life of Jesus Christ, the one who demonstrated how to live a life truly pleasing to God.
Muddling Through the Universe 