punishment bears some parsing. To me, it looks like we actually have three distinct punishments: (1) the “sword” will afflict his descendants; (2) his wives will be publicly ravished by his “neighbor”; (3) the baby Bathsheba bore him will die.
David’s traditional ancient culture included a powerful honor/shame system. In such a culture, to be able to live with honor is more important than to live at all. If a rival publicly humiliates David by ravishing his wives on the palace rooftop, the shame would be unbearable. Indeed, later in his reign, David is forced to flee from Jerusalem when one of his sons usurps the throne. Absalom’s coup is supported by the majority of the people, and as part of his takeover, Absalom publicly goes into a tent to sleep with the ten concubines David had left in the palace when he fled (2 Sm 15:16 and 16:22). On the one hand, Absalom’s despicable act would be part of any throne takeover in a kingdom where the king kept a harem—the possession of the king’s wives and concubines would signify kingship, and the king’s marriages represented diplomatic alliances—so it is a specifically political act, a royal marriage to the former king’s consorts. Similarly, David had taken Saul’s wives when he became king (2 Sm 12:8). On the other hand, we can see in Absalom’s political act a fulfillment of Nathan’s prediction of divine punishment. Indeed, at the instigation of Bathsheba’s grandfather, Ahithophel, David’s courtesans are publicly ravished on the same roof from which he first lusted after Bathsheba.20 The repugnance and poetic justice of it are startling, but the punishment fits the crime. David stole Uriah’s wife, and now his concubines are stolen from him. While it is horrifying to our sensibilities, these women would have been subject to whichever claimant to the throne controlled the palace. For all they knew, Absalom would be their king and husband for the rest of their lives. The punishment, the embarrassment, and the shame fall on David. The women themselves are not punished, but transferred from one claimant to another, albeit unjustly.21 In fact, when David returns, he sets these concubines aside and does not have relations with them again (2 Sm 20:3).
Last, the baby who is the result of David’s union with Bathsheba is clearly not at fault. Yet his father’s sin brings death upon him. Here, our gut jumps up to say: “Hey! It’s not the baby’s fault. Why punish the baby?” But primarily, David is being punished for his sin. He will not get to enjoy this child, for the child is taken away. If death were the end of the story, this would have an unbearable finality to it, yet notice David’s words about the child: “I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Sm 12:23). David recognizes that in death he will meet his child. While the child suffers death as a result of his father’s sin, in the ultimate course of God’s justice and mercy, death is not the end.
David’s story teaches us a few things about God. God reigns not just as an executive, but as a judge. He sees all that we do and justly determines what we deserve. Sadly, the consequences of our sins and offenses against God are not confined to us as individuals. We are all connected for good or for ill. When we act rightly, love others, and obey God’s law, our lives are blessings to our family and friends, but when we do evil and break God’s commandments, our lives become the opposite. Our sins and failings bring down evil consequences on those around us, including our children. David’s sin harms not only himself, but his whole family tree. Even though God “puts away” his sin, in justice the punishment must be administered. David, his family, and his nation suffer because of his evil choices. Punishment is not silly or random; rather it restores the order of justice. God teaches us that punishment reveals something about who we are, about who he is, and about how the universe works. In fact, we’ll see that God’s justice teaches us by design. He intends to reveal himself through his intervention in human history.
Chapter 4
God the Teacher
If I woke you up by shining a flashlight in your eyes, you probably wouldn’t thank me. If I tried to teach you differential calculus before you knew how to add and subtract, we probably wouldn’t get very far. If I chose to teach you a foreign language only by talking quickly in complex sentences in that language, you probably wouldn’t pick it up. Underlying these problems is an important principle: good teaching follows good order. You have to learn one thing before you can learn another. Start with the basics and proceed to more complex ideas. Turn the light up slowly.
Since he’s a teacher, God knows this principle. In fact, as the only omniscient being, he’s the best teacher. But if you think about what it would be like to be an infinite being trying to communicate with limited, finite, problematic beings like us, you can see that there’s a bit of a gap. Just imagine Albert Einstein trying to teach his theory of relativity to kindergarteners. For anything to stick, God has to teach us according to our capacity—and our capacity is very limited compared with his. Fortunately, God is not a disconnected college professor type. He’s not a mere subject-matter expert with quirky habits and lousy social skills; he’s perfect in every way. So he makes for a great expert and a great teacher, the best combination.
Gradualism
The central idea in God’s pedagogy is gradualism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “The divine plan of Revelation…involves a specific divine pedagogy: God communicates himself to man gradually.”22 This may seem like a nobrainer—that education has to happen in stages—but when we reflect on the history of salvation, sometimes we would prefer for there to be no stages at all. Why didn’t Jesus come right after the Fall? Why did God put the Tree in the Garden of Eden in the first place? How come he let his people languish in sin and suffering for so long before he put the final stage of his rescue plan into effect? These questions all get at the nature of God’s teaching, his pedagogy. The Old Testament displays the divine pedagogy in action. God slowly, over the course of time, reveals more and more of who he is to humanity.
The central idea in God’s pedagogy is gradualism.
A lot of the Old Testament stories that perplex us as “dark” passages can be understood through the principle of the divine pedagogy. For example, the ten plagues, which the Lord sends against Pharaoh and the Egyptians, show his teaching style. The Exodus story is very familiar to us—God sends his servant Moses to Pharaoh to ask that the enslaved people of Israel be freed for a few days to go into the desert and worship the Lord (Ex 5:1). It is a simple enough request, but Pharaoh resists God and refuses to allow the people freedom to worship. In order to convince Pharaoh, the Lord sends a series of plagues against him and the Egyptians (Ex 7–12). The plagues start out as mere demonstrations: water turning to blood, annoying frogs. But as Pharaoh refuses after each plague to let the people of Israel go, the plagues get more and more severe. The livestock die, the people are afflicted with boils, and eventually, when Pharaoh persists in his obstinate refusal, the Lord sends the angel of death to wipe out the firstborn of Egypt. While there are a lot of interesting questions to probe in this story, the main point I want to focus on is that God is gradually punishing Pharaoh for his resistance. He does not send the angel of death right away, but slowly turns up the heat as Pharaoh refuses again and again to let the people of Israel go and worship.
Jesus, in the course of his own three-year ministry, uses the same method that the Holy Trinity uses throughout the Bible: teach gradually.
Lessons in Order
We see a similar teaching method in the life of Jesus. He doesn’t jump up right away as a baby and tell everyone, “I am the light of the world!” Instead, he waits until he is thirty years old to initiate his ministry, and even then he teaches much of the time in shrouded, mysterious parables. St. John Paul II spoke of this aspect of Jesus’ teaching:
In his preaching to the crowds he used parables to communicate his teaching in a way that suited the intelligence of his listeners. In teaching his disciples he proceeded gradually, taking into account the difficulty they had in understanding. So it was only in the second part of his public
