by David Scott Robertson
1 Chron. 28:2-3 (NASB)
Then King David rose to his feet and said, "Listen to me, my brethren and my people; I had intended to build a permanent home for the ark of the covenant of the Lord and for the footstool of our God. So I had made preparations to build it. [3] "But God said to me, 'You shall not build a house for My name because you are a man of war and have shed blood.'
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King David had the unique honor of being called a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). There are a lot of noteworthy people listed in the Bible, but no one else gets this extraordinary comment made about them.
One reason for this might be David’s incomparable passion for God. David loved God so much that he was willing to become undignified in his worship before the Lord. This caused some to despise him for it (2 Samuel 6:20-21). God loves it when people fear God more than men.
Another reason David might have been called a man after God’s own heart is that David had an unparalleled understanding of and appreciation for authority. He demonstrated this time and again when he refused to kill King Saul even though he had multiple opportunities to do so as Saul relentlessly hunted David down like an animal.
David’s zeal for God is forever documented in the many Psalms that bear his name as author. His love songs were not to women but to his God. And God loved him for it and made a covenant with David establishing his dynasty forever.
Once God had firmly established David’s kingdom, it was in the heart of David to build a permanent dwelling – a magnificent temple – to house the Ark of the Covenant and to glorify the name of the one true God, Jehovah.
But here is where God draws the line and says no. He sends Nathan the prophet to the king to relay the message that it is a good thing for David to desire to honor God in building a temple. But that honor will not fall to David but rather to his son Solomon.
The reason? “But God said to me, 'You shall not build a house for My name because you are a man of war and have shed blood.' (1 Chronicles 28:3).
There is no telling how much blood David shed on the battlefield. As a matter of fact, David was such a prolific warrior that the women of the day made up a song about David’s conquests:
(1 Sam 18:7 NIV) As they danced, they sang: "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands."
Even on his deathbed, David, the man of blood, is plotting the murders of men. He instructs Solomon to execute Joah son of Zeruiah for his senseless murder of two of David’s army generals (1 Kings 2:5-6). And David also says this about a man named Shimei son of Gera, the man who cursed David with a terrible curse as he was fleeing from Absalom:
“[David to Solomon] You are a wise man, and you will know how to arrange a bloody death for him’” (1 Kings 2:9).
David was a man of war and a man of blood. But it’s not the blood he shed on the battlefield fighting the righteous battles of the Lord that I believe prevented David from building the temple. I believe there was blood on his hands that had nothing to do with the “tens of thousands” of deaths he was responsible for, both directly and indirectly as commander-in-chief of Israel’s armed forces.
The reason I feel David was called “a man of blood” was because he shed the innocent blood of one man: Uriah the Hittite. In his lust, David had an affair with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, and got her pregnant. To cover up his sin, David plotted the death of Uriah, who incidentally was listed among David’s mightiest men. Uriah was part of a famous and elite group of David’s troops called “The Thirty” (2 Samuel 23:39) that put their lives on the line constantly in defense of the king and Israel.
Although David did not personally plunge the dagger into Uriah’s heart and take his life, God nevertheless held the king responsible for the death sentence that David had imposed on this faithful warrior. And because of that, I believe, the Holy Spirit who inspires the writing of all scripture, chose to have King David described as “a man of blood.”
Psalm 51 records the deeply repentant response of King David to Nathan the Prophet’s exposure of the conspiracy. And this repentance and subsequent reconciliation with his God saved the kingdom from being handed over to another more worthy to rule as God did in the case of King Saul who had disobeyed God so flagrantly.
David was forgiven but the consequences for David, the man of blood, were that the sword of violence within his own household would never depart. David made love to Bathsheba at the cost of three of his sons' lives (the baby from the affair, Ammon, and Absalom) and the privilege to build the temple to the great God Jehovah.
The book of Proverbs hosts a list of seven things that God hates. Included in the list are “hands that shed innocent blood” (Proverbs 6:17). May we as modern-day Christians, the blood-bought church of the redeemed, treat the blood of men and of Jesus with utmost respect.
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
DSR
1/17/05