Cease and Desist Orders

For my life is exhausted in sorrow and my years in sighing.  Through my crime my strength stumbles and my limbs are worn out.  Psalm 31:11 (Hebrew Bible)  Robert Alter

Exhausted in sorrow – an excerpt.

When he looked up, Nathan was gone.

“Call him back.  Call him back.”  He almost shouted, but in the middle of the sentence, his voice cracked as if an old and feeble man had suddenly replaced the figure in royal robes.

“My lord,” the chamberlain’s tone was conciliatory, “he has gone.  No one knows where he went.”

“Find him.  Find him now!” David screeched.  But he knew it was too late.  The verdict had been given.

Realizing his outburst confirmed the prophet’s accusation, there was nothing to do but prepare for humiliation.  David couldn’t remember how he ended up in the royal chambers after his outburst in the throne room.  It was as if he were intoxicated, his mind and body in a fog.  But there he was—and there she was.  Bathsheba.  Sitting by the bed.

“My love, what’s wrong?  You look as if you’ve just returned from the front.  You’re staggering.  What happened?”

David opened his mouth, but the sound was not human.  Bathsheba responded with growing anxiety.  “My husband, are you ill?  Should I call the physician?”  Her voice was quivering at the edge of panic.

“Nathan . . .” David got the word out.  “Nathan came . . .”  Suddenly he collapsed onto the floor.  Bathsheba rushed to him, lifting his head to her lap.

“What?  What is it?  What happened?”

David felt her hands caress his perspiring forehead.  He smelled her perfume engulf him.  His head rose and fell with her breathing.  How he longed for her!  How he needed her!  And now, how to tell her he was undone?  They were undone.  The kingdom would be taken from him because he could not resist her.  The one who brought him relief from invisible burdens was now the same one who threw him into public shame.  Suddenly he was transported back to the rooftop.  He saw her freshly recast, this time not as the siren who promised him escape but as the temptress whose calculated seduction brought him ruin.  The emotional pendulum, swinging from guilt to blame, made him gasp for breath.

Bathsheba felt him quiver and choke.  Her anxiety escalated.  She drew his head to her breasts.  “My love, speak to me,” she implored.

He felt her warmth surround him.  He heard her heart beating.  He knew no other could have reached into his soul as she had.  As clearly as he knew the depth of his sin, just as clearly he knew he could never have turned from it.  There was no moral fiber left in him after so many battles, so many enemies, so much responsibility.  At the moment she became his rescue, he was lost to her regardless of the outcome.  He regretted ever walking on the roof, ever watching her bathe, ever conceiving of the plan to take her as his own, and, at the same time, he felt as if fate made the circumstances impossible to avoid.  The accident that became destiny.  And now, now he would pay, and pay dearly, for reaching for something he should never have had but could not resist.

He turned his bearded face into her and inhaled her anima.  The time had come to own his acts.

“Nathan the prophet came to me.  Just now,” he began.

“He told me a story, but it was really God’s message to me.  God has judged me for taking you.  I am held accountable before Him for what I have done, for taking you to my bed, for conspiring against your husband.”

Bathsheba pushed him back.  “My husband?  What did he mean, ‘my husband’?” she thought.  The curtain was torn.  The truth of his deed was revealed.  It was not just adultery.  It was murder.  Suddenly Bathsheba understood.  Uriah did not die heroically in battle as all were told.  She knew, without another word, that this man, her lover, her king, had arranged his death.  The justification she believed, that she wanted to believe, was shattered.  God would not overlook her flagrant disregard of her marriage vow.  All this time she thought that it was God’s doing, that her husband died in order to make a way for her to be with the king.  But now she knew the truth.  Uriah was dead because of her vow, and the king was responsible.

She pushed David away and stood over his crumpled body.  “Tell me.  Tell me all of it.”  But the  bitterness of the truth she now knew had always been there.  She recognized the head of the serpent, the suspicion that something too convenient had transpired when her husband died after she conceived with another man’s child.  It was too easy, and she knew God didn’t make life easy.  At the time she convinced herself that it was simply coincidence, a fortunate circumstance that allowed her to hold her head up and become the king’s wife.  But even then she knew there was something else, and at this moment, that truth impaled her.  The king had murdered her husband in order to conceal his affair.  The lust and passion of their union was laced with poison, not just for them but for an innocent, noble man.  He died because they wanted him dead.

David saw it in her eyes.  One lie hid another.  Once revealed, they all came out like a cascade of stones from a broken wall.

Topical Index:  sorrow, exhausted, David, Bathsheba, Psalm 31:11