THE MISSIONARY JOURNEY OF PAUL

THE GREAT KING

heat of day, when he saw Bathsheba, who was "very beautiful to look upon," washing herself in a cistern on the top of her house. Forgetful of all his past, and of all that was due from him as God's anointed, he made Bathsheba the victim of his guilty passion. There is no need to detail the fresh crimes in whichhe was entangled by the desire to hide his guilt. His attempt at concealment was frustrated by the fine feeling and honourable firmness of his unsuspecting soldier,1 and no way remained to escape the consequences of his misdoing except to plot the base murder of Uriah while he was fighting the king's battles before Rabbath-Ammon. David, whom God had chosen from the sheepfolds, to be the ruler of His people Israel, became the secret, treacherous assassin of his brave commander. The murdercould only be carried out by making Joab his accomplice.From that hour his peace was gone. It might have been said to him as to the chief in the great tragedy—"Not poppy nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owd'st yesterday."Joab, as commander-in-chief and nephew of the king, had already been too powerful for a subject, but from that time he became the complete controller of David's destiny, because he— and at first he alone—was master of his guilty secret. Ahito- phel too, hitherto David's most trusted counsellor, was now secretly his enemy. He may not, at first, have been aware ofthe murder of Uriah, but he was the grandfather of the woman whom David had so foully wronged.2That woman was the mother of King Solomon. The date of Solomon's birth cannot be ascertained with any certainty, be- cause we do not know the age at which he ascended the throne.1 That Uriah had become a proselyte we infer from his language in 2 Sam. xi. II.2 See Blunt's "Undesigned Coincidences," Pt. II. x. p. 145. Professor Blunt is usually credited with the first notice of this probability. It had, however, been pointed out in the commentary of David Qimchi, and heonly quotes it from earlier expositors (see Grätz, "Gesch. d. Juden." i. 263). In 2 Sam. xv. 31, David's prayer that God would turn the counsel of Ahitophel to foolishness seems to be a play on his name, "brother of foolishness" (?), though his advice was regarded as an "oracle of God''(2 Sam. xvi. 23).