by jimwalton » Wed Aug 22, 2018 1:20 pm
> But that would imply that the children of criminals should be judged or scrutinized for any behavior they might have picked up from their parent/s.
Not at all. What it implies is that children learn values and behavior from their parents. It's interesting, though, that some people think what people pick up from their parents should be part of their court case. Remember that kid who killed 4 people in a drunk driving accident and his lawyers tried to get him off the hook saying he was a victim of "Affluenza"? I thought it was ridiculous, as did many others, but the judge (if I'm remembering right), only gave him 10 years of probation.
> That seems dangerously close to judging them before they've even committed any crime.
Yeah, I don't believe in this, and neither does the Bible. (I'm not sure anyone does. We've all seen Minority Report.)
> But that would only mean that the children of the guilty parties suffer rather than just the guilty parties themselves.
Sometimes there is collateral damage. The family of Mollie Tibbetts will suffer for the rest of their lives. The alleged perp may get put in jail, serve some time, and get released, but the family will never stop suffering. It's how life goes.
> If I commit a crime, the police shouldn't decide to come decades after the fact and arrest my son.
You're right, and this is not what's going on in the text. Nobody but nobody advocates this kind of justice, and neither does the Bible.
> The text implies that god made the child sick, though.
The active punishment of God on David was that the sword would never depart from his house (2 Sam. 12.10) because of his adultery and murder. The punishment fits the crime: David "used" the sword to kill Uriah, and so "the sword" of violence would devour David's family (cf. 2 Sam. 11.25). 2 Samuel 12.11 mentions more of what God will do. Those two things are God's active punishment on David.
David confesses his sin in 12.13, and he is forgiven for it, and then he is told the child will die. The text makes no point of saying, and never claims, that God is killing the child because David had a man killed (a life for a life). The text never claims that this was a judgment of God to satisfy justice or to appease God. We are left to make other conclusions. Some background and cross reference information is helpful.
In the ancient Near East, including Israelite culture, there was no distinction between natural and supernatural. Their perception was that God or the gods were involved in every detail of life. Thus anything that happened was considered to be an act of God. It's not surprising that they word it this way ("The Lord struck the child"). Any death was "God killed him." Any life was "God spared him." The Lord closed wombs; the Lord opened wombs. Everything was perceived as an act of God. It is very active language that shouldn't be taken in a modern sense. At the same time, the author's point is that David has sinned. If you look at the whole story of David, you'll discover that David loses 4 children as a result of what he did. One son murders another. One son is executed by David's general. This son dies of some kind of disease.
In our modern way of thinking (whether it's more accurate or not is impossible to say), we would not word it this way or understand it this way. We would say the child died a natural death, and that David was cut to the heart with grief, and that was his judgment. But since they saw no distinction between natural and supernatural, they expressed it differently. That's not to claim that the child would have lived anyway. The child may have been born very sickly and was so unhealthy he was going to die. That's how we would say it. The way they said that was "The Lord struck the child and he became ill."
The text is clearly about judgment on David, not on anyone else. Several instances of death surround David's sin, but the focus of the text is on David himself, and that he received what was fair and just for him to receive.
But when we come to the baby, we're in a different arena. The baby was not complicit in crime as the other raping, murderous, and rebellious sons were. Now, it's possible that the baby's health problems were part of the "natural consequences" of David and Bathsheba's union. Congenital defects are somewhat common, especially if there is stress during pregnancy. Making spiritually evaluative statements is difficult. Did God just let nature take its course, and in that sense "smite" the child, or did God show some kind of malicious meanness, punishing the child for the sins of the father? Well, the latter is totally inconsistent with the picture of God in Scripture, and its inconsistency is so great as to make me reject it out of hand.
> But that would imply that the children of criminals should be judged or scrutinized for any behavior they might have picked up from their parent/s.
Not at all. What it implies is that children learn values and behavior from their parents. It's interesting, though, that some people think what people pick up from their parents should be part of their court case. Remember that kid who killed 4 people in a drunk driving accident and his lawyers tried to get him off the hook saying he was a victim of "Affluenza"? I thought it was ridiculous, as did many others, but the judge (if I'm remembering right), only gave him 10 years of probation.
> That seems dangerously close to judging them before they've even committed any crime.
Yeah, I don't believe in this, and neither does the Bible. (I'm not sure anyone does. We've all seen Minority Report.)
> But that would only mean that the children of the guilty parties suffer rather than just the guilty parties themselves.
Sometimes there is collateral damage. The family of Mollie Tibbetts will suffer for the rest of their lives. The alleged perp may get put in jail, serve some time, and get released, but the family will never stop suffering. It's how life goes.
> If I commit a crime, the police shouldn't decide to come decades after the fact and arrest my son.
You're right, and this is not what's going on in the text. Nobody but nobody advocates this kind of justice, and neither does the Bible.
> The text implies that god made the child sick, though.
The active punishment of God on David was that the sword would never depart from his house (2 Sam. 12.10) because of his adultery and murder. The punishment fits the crime: David "used" the sword to kill Uriah, and so "the sword" of violence would devour David's family (cf. 2 Sam. 11.25). 2 Samuel 12.11 mentions more of what God will do. Those two things are God's active punishment on David.
David confesses his sin in 12.13, and he is forgiven for it, and then he is told the child will die. The text makes no point of saying, and never claims, that God is killing the child because David had a man killed (a life for a life). The text never claims that this was a judgment of God to satisfy justice or to appease God. We are left to make other conclusions. Some background and cross reference information is helpful.
In the ancient Near East, including Israelite culture, there was no distinction between natural and supernatural. Their perception was that God or the gods were involved in every detail of life. Thus anything that happened was considered to be an act of God. It's not surprising that they word it this way ("The Lord struck the child"). Any death was "God killed him." Any life was "God spared him." The Lord closed wombs; the Lord opened wombs. Everything was perceived as an act of God. It is very active language that shouldn't be taken in a modern sense. At the same time, the author's point is that David has sinned. If you look at the whole story of David, you'll discover that David loses 4 children as a result of what he did. One son murders another. One son is executed by David's general. This son dies of some kind of disease.
In our modern way of thinking (whether it's more accurate or not is impossible to say), we would not word it this way or understand it this way. We would say the child died a natural death, and that David was cut to the heart with grief, and that was his judgment. But since they saw no distinction between natural and supernatural, they expressed it differently. That's not to claim that the child would have lived anyway. The child may have been born very sickly and was so unhealthy he was going to die. That's how we would say it. The way they said that was "The Lord struck the child and he became ill."
The text is clearly about judgment on David, not on anyone else. Several instances of death surround David's sin, but the focus of the text is on David himself, and that he received what was fair and just for him to receive.
But when we come to the baby, we're in a different arena. The baby was not complicit in crime as the other raping, murderous, and rebellious sons were. Now, it's possible that the baby's health problems were part of the "natural consequences" of David and Bathsheba's union. Congenital defects are somewhat common, especially if there is stress during pregnancy. Making spiritually evaluative statements is difficult. Did God just let nature take its course, and in that sense "smite" the child, or did God show some kind of malicious meanness, punishing the child for the sins of the father? Well, the latter is totally inconsistent with the picture of God in Scripture, and its inconsistency is so great as to make me reject it out of hand.