+Z’ev

Commemoration of Laurence

Today’s assigned readings:
2 Samuel 12:1-14, Acts 19:21-41, Mark 9:14-29

David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan said to David, “Now the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die. Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child that is born to you shall die.”
2 Samuel 12:13-14

I’m not going to get it right… but I’m going to try…

Peshat (simple meaning): God said David’s son would die. Later he does. The first rule of Midrash is that nothing can contradict the literal meaning.

Remez (hints, clues): By allegory, we might see here that the fruit of our sin can be killed by repentance. David does one heck of a repentance here (not recounted well, at all in the text). By tradition David the poet composes Psalm 51 (Miserere Me) on the spot here.

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will return to you.
Deliver me from bloodshed, O God, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.
O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
For you have no delight in sacrifice; if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,
then you will delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

This is the ultimate Psalm of repentance in the eastern communities: it is said at every Matins, at several of the “lesser” hours of the day, as well as in traditional private devotions. It comes up on Ash Wednesday in the western communities and at other times of penitence.

And our repentance destroys in us the fruit of our sins. Indeed, sometimes that destruction will be very sad for me may be very attached to the fruit of our sins.

Derash (interpretation) For a homily we might comment that our sins often effect those innocents near and far who have nothing to do with our actions. We might think of how the prideful actions of Japan (as one story goes) or of the US (as another story goes) led to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We may consider how the alleged actions of one man - Sadam Hussein - are being visited unwillingly on all his neighbours long after his own death.

Sod (mystical, lit. “secret”) We might see in David a prefiguring of Mankind’s repentance and the need for the “something extra” - the Death of Christ (our own Son of Man) as the Capstone that makes all repentance possible.

None of that would makes any sense at all of the fact and none of it does away with the fact that God (seemingly in this story) killed an innocent child for the sins of his father - sins for this the father had repented. Be mindful that the Jews did not believe in an afterlife “in paradise with God” at this point in their history. The dead child was punished for Dad’s sins and, basically, was consigned to the grave for all eternity. We can’t get away with saying “Well, the child went to God and so was ‘better off’.”

What is going on here? What kind of deity is this? Did this actually happen? Is this a way of explaining away the parenthood of Solomon (Naw…. he can’t be the bastard child, that one died.)? Is this a mythological way of explaining an actual child’s death when David had been so seemingly blessed otherwise? Is this a story to explain the existence of Psalm 51?

I don’t know…

I know that I don’t know. That this god scares me and acts, on the whole, not like “the vengeful God of the Old Testament” but, to be certain, like the Vengeful God of the Early parts of the OT and not even like the reasonably sane God of the later books. This is still the tribal desert volcano god that the Jews found in Sinai. He really scares me.

I have no way to relate to him other than to note that at some point in our faith history, humanity started to outgrow him. Rather than a straight line of evolution, however, this deity still lives side by side with other, more advanced forms (rather like the two human ancestral skulls found recently), and we are all growing out of him.

I hope…