Former Blackout Artist

Joab sent David a full account of the battle. He instructed the messenger: “When you have finished giving the king this account of the battle, the king’s anger may flare up, and he may ask you, ‘Why did you get so close to the city to fight? Didn’t you know they would shoot arrows from the wall? Who killed Abimelek son of Jerub-Besheth? Didn’t a woman drop an upper millstone on him from the wall, so that he died in Thebez? Why did you get so close to the wall?’ If he asks you this, then say to him, ‘Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead.” – 2 Samuel 11:21

I was reading the whole David-Bathsheba story the other day, trying to not rush through it like I sometimes do. And then I noticed a moment in the story that reads almost like dry biblical comedy – the kind where nobody’s laughing because the whole thing is actually just one big whopping tragedy.

Joab has just carried out David’s quiet little plan. He pushed the troops up to the city wall – a move so obviously insane that even new recruits knew better. Israel had a whole cautionary tale about this. It was the Abimelek incident. The guy marched too close to a tower, and a woman dropped a millstone on his head. End of story. End of career. End of Abimelek.

So here in 2 Samuel, Joab basically reenacts that exact mistake… on purpose. Why? Because if you remember – David gave Joab orders to have Uriah killed in battle. “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is the fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.”

Then Joab summons a messenger and gives him a post-battle pep talk before sending him back to David: “Okay, listen. When you tell the king what happened, he might get mad and lecture you about Abimelek – you know, the whole ‘don’t stand next to walls’ thing. If he does, just say this magic phrase: ‘Uriah is dead also.’ That should settle him down.”

And the sad part is… Joab is right. After all, this was all part of David’s evil plan.

And the puzzling thing is that David never mentions Abimelek in his response to the messenger. He doesn’t lecture. He doesn’t question. He just hears the update, nods, and says, “Well, the sword devours one as well as another…” Or in today’s lingo, “Well, that’s too bad. I guess today wasn’t Uriah’s day.”

And that’s the funny-yet-sad part. Everyone in the story knows this was a bad idea. Everyone knows this shouldn’t have happened. Everyone knows the Abimelek story by heart. And yet here they are – repeating it, pretending they’re not, and hoping nobody notices.

But the narrator notices. And we’re supposed to notice too. Sometimes a story in the Bible expects us to be familiar with other stories in the Bible.

The warning story from Israel’s past – the one about what pride and bad decisions can cost – is sitting in the background like an unwanted guest no one wants to acknowledge. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.

Or dies.

Ultimately what this story wants us to notice is what happens when people drift away from God. This is how a good man can fall victim to unchecked desire. This is how sin turns intelligent people into actors in a play they never meant to perform.

And the irony!! – a man on a roof whose downfall was falling for a woman; and a man whose downfall was standing too close to a woman on a roof who felled him with a stone.

Sometimes the most painful lessons aren’t loud or dramatic. They’re the ones where we suddenly see ourselves…

…standing a little too close to a wall we were warned about.