The prophet Nathan called David's supreme violation of khesed against his loyal general Uriah a blasphemy against the Lord. Even though David made it seem like Uriah was just another casualty of the Ammonite war, needlessly exposing his general to danger was seen as killing Uriah "with the sword of the Ammonites." Just as Saul's violation of Adonai’s khesed with the Gibeonites brought calamity on his household, David's violation of khesed brought immediate and future trouble upon himself. David's secrecy and subterfuge in it would ultimately result in public shame, as David's "neighbor" as Nathan mysteriously identifies will publicly humiliate David. It will turn out that one of his sons (not Shlomo/Solomon but Absalom) will take David's lack of khesed to heart and commit treachery against David; after all, a king can do whatever he wants.
David comforted his wife Bat-Sheva, came to her and went to bed with her; she gave birth to a son and named him Shlomo. Adonai loved him and sent through Natan the prophet to have him named Y’didyah [loved by God], for Adonai’s sake.- 2 Samuel 12:25
This chain of events will be set soon after as David's eldest son Amnon will forcibly rape his half-sister Tamar (Absalom's full sister, both mothered by the foreign Geshurite princess), and David will protect Amnon punishment (and protect his dynasty from embarrassment) by letting that crime go unexposed. Amnon apparently thought royalty can get by with anything, and David's habit of keeping things secret will uphold that belief. When Absalom later exacts justice (years later in a premeditated event, not the crime of passion in the 1986 dramatization), he himself will be judged, though with banishment instead of execution.
It is a common misconception that rape under the Old Testament was met with a fine. It's possible that having not taken place in a remote area, Amnon could never have been judged guilty of a forcible rape. Amnon's servant was within shouting distance, and other than Tamar appealing to Amnon's better nature, we don't know whether or not she was too embarrassed to be discovered. Absalom, apparently already knowing that David would not censure Amnon, immediately plots Amnon's death -- not simply because Amnon forced his sister, but by committing the worse crime in that day, after making Tamar unlikely to ever be married (certainly not to royalty) he did not take her in marriage. As with much youthful obsession, his infatuation turned immediately to contempt after being indulged, and he scorned her.
The misconception that rape was a finable offense in the Torah comes from laws that tried to distinguish between forcible rape and statutory rape. Statutory rape in the Torah, as opposed to its meaning in America, was the deflowering of an unmarried/unbetrothed girl with her consent but without her family's consent. The act potentially made her uneligible, left her without children to care for her in her old age, and left her parents with an extra mouth to feed. It was resolvable with a "shotgun wedding." But even in that case, their was still a legal penalty for taking her without first coming to some betrothal agreement with her family. When the prince Shechem sleeps with Jacob's daughter Dinah and is actually prepared to do right by her unlike Amnon, Dinah's brothers Simeon and Levi are so offended at Shechem's lack of respect for their family that they judge Shechem's whole city as rapists, leaving Dinah without any prospects. This may have been the worst possible outcome for Dinah. As Absalom's sister tells Amnon, rejecting her after taking her virginity is the worse crime. David would probably have avoided Amnon's death by forcing him into a shotgun wedding. Two years pass by before Amnon is executed by Absalom, and how Tamar had been wronged appears completely forgotten. No doubt, after Amnon's death, rumors of why Absalom had killed Amnon probably spread through the kingdom.
David was informed by the prophet that his decision to cloak his sin with secrecy through murder would have consequences on his own household. This is all framed in terms of Yahweh's judgment, and yet we know that none of these people needed any help from Yahweh in the departments of lust, ambition, and pride. David abandoned his family over to these sins himself when he made his great break from the faithfulness that had characterized his rise to power.
The heir of the house of David does not arise out of this poisoned household. Not even the son of the wise Abigail, Daniel, takes his father's place. The only thing that we know of Daniel is that unlike the three other eldest sons he stayed out of trouble. Absalom was begotten through an alliance of David with the Canaanites in Geshur that the Israeli tribe of Manasseh had not driven out. Absalom's name (אב-שלום) means "fathered by peace." The heir of the kingdom would be Solomon/Shlomo name (שלמה), "a man of peace (שלום) and rest." The keys of kingdom continued through the David's wrongly acquired relationship, and Bathsheba's son Solomon, a man who would prefer wisdom to fame and wealth (at least at the beginning of his reign), drew the favor of God. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.
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