Wednesday, November 12, 2014

To Vindicate Your Deed


In the haftorah on Parshas Chayay Sarah King David is very old. Because his body cannot generate enough heat for him to be warm in his clothes, his servants suggest that a young girl should be found to sleep with him so he will not become cold at night. The suggestion is accepted and a beautiful maiden, Avishag, is found.

When the king does not have relations with the girl, his son, Adoniya, attempts to seize the throne. He is supported by a number of important people among them Yoav, David’s general. The support of Solomon, the crown prince, is not solicited. Bat-sheva gives David a detailed account of what is happening, which is repeated by Nathan the prophet. With that King David publicly reaffirms that the proper heir to the throne of Israel is Shlomo, which ends the rebellion.

In the parsha Abraham appoints his servant to search for a wife for his son, Isaac. In finding Rebecca, Isaac’s soul mate, an emotional adventure ensues. The servant in detail recounts this adventure to Rivka’s family. The family says that all of this is from heaven and agree to the marriage. However, after they have had a little bit of time to think about it, they attempt to delay or renege. When the attempts fail, they give Rivka a blessing and even send a nursemaid with her on the way.

The detailed repetitions form a literary connection between the parsha its haftorah. The essential connection, though, is the idea of a tsadik of the generation handing over the torch to the tsadik of the coming generation which will result in the setting up a dynasty of tsaddikim that will remain for all generations. A much more concealed idea is the elevation of the spark of holiness that is buried in a very hard thick shell of evil. This is the story of Bat-sheva.

The story of Bat-sheva is told in the second book of Shmuel chapter eleven. In it King David unwittingly sees Bat-sheva bathing. He asks who she is and is told that she is the wife of Uriya the Hittite.  He then sends for her, she comes, and they have relations. When Bat-sheva becomes pregnant, she tells David, who then sends for Uriya, her husband.

When Uriya arrives, David gives him a nice meal, even gets him a bit drunk, and tells him to return home to his wife. When Uriya spends the night in the palace, David asks him why he did that. He explains that his “lord” Yoav is at war therefore it would be inappropriate for him to spend the night with his wife. David then returns Uriya to the battlefront and orders Yoav to manipulate the situation so that he will be killed. Yoav complies.

When Bat-sheva hears the news she mourns for her husband. When the mourning period has passed, David marries her, and she gives birth to a son. What King David did though was bad in the eyes of Hashem. When confronted by Nathan the prophet, David immediately confesses that he has sinned to Hashem. He is then cursed saying evil will arise in his house, he will be publicly sexually humiliated, and the new born infant will die. David accepts the verdict, but never the less prays profusely for the child.

After the baby dies, David and Bat-sheva have a second son that they name Shlomo. Hashem loves Shlomo and even has the prophet affectionately call him Yedidya meaning that he is a true friend of the Creator.

The story is riddled with difficulties. Perhaps the most difficult is that the child of this affair should become the companion of G-d and the king of Israel. King David wrote Psalm 51 specifically about this episode. The psalm is very intense and in it David acknowledges his violations and mistakes. He asks G-d to give him a pure heart and the proper spirit should renewed with him. He also asks that he should not be sent away from G-d and that the spirit of holiness should not be taken from him. The difficulty is that he also says that it was to G-d alone that he sinned, meaning that he did not sin, not against Uriya and not against Bat-sheva.

The Gemara (Shabbos 56a) brings a justification of David’s actions saying that Uriah was a rebel against the king. It quotes Uriah saying that his master was Yoav (2 Samuel 11:11). Concerning Bat-sheva it says the soldiers in David’s army divorced their wives in anticipation of battle so in the event they were missing in action their wives could remarry. Therefore David technically did not commit adultery.

It comes out that one must look at this as being in the realm of the secrets of Torah. Therefore one must rely on conjecture and a sparse number of hints. In addition it helps to consider the conscious and subconscious mind. The key to the puzzle seems to be two Zohars (section 1 page 8b). The first says that after the action King David was stricken with dread that he had violated the verse, “You will not lie carnally with your neighbor’s wife to defile yourself along with her, (Leviticus 18:20) and, perhaps he had polluted the covenant through obscenity. HaKadosh Baruch Hu responded that he had not because Bat-sheva had been set aside for him from the day the world was created. In addition the Zohar reveals that Uriah had never touched Bat-sheva and, she was in fact a virgin when David HaMelech had her.

There are difficulties with Yoav. He was King David’s general and he came to his aid during the rebellion of Avshalom. However, he too rebelled in supporting Adoniya over Shlomo. On his deathbed David tells Shlomo to execute Yoav because he used the cover of war to murder two rivals.

When Shlomo comes after him, Yoav flees to the Temple, grasps the corners of the altar, and tells him that this is where he wishes to die. The reason was because he did not wish to be executed as a criminal rather he wished to die with dignity. The underlying idea is that much of his devotion to religion and to David was real. However one tsadik for him was enough. He did not want another righteous king or a righteous dynasty.

The hint is that Uriah more than shared his master’s point of view. One can speculate on some level he recognized that Bat-Sheva was meant for David. Therefore he married her so as to prevent David from marrying her and producing a proper heir to the throne. However, the good in him prevented him from touching her.

The reason that David wound up in this peculiar situation was because Bat-sheva really was his soul mate. However the small amount of evil in him blinded him and allowed him to behave in a ruthless and unprincipled way. This evil was an aspect of the shattered vessels that were in his soul. This was his sin but it was not the result of his free will. The torment that followed was the rectification. This is an aspect of “Indeed with iniquity I was formed, and with sin my mother conceived me”, as well as, “in order that You be shown to be justified in Your conduct, and correct in Your judgment”.

The Psalm also contains hints of a prayer for purification, as it says, “Behold, You desired that truth be in the subconscious, and in the concealed part You teach me wisdom. Purify me . . . and I will become pure; wash me, and I will become whiter than snow”.  To a certain extent this sin was the shell for the book of Psalms in which he declares, “I will teach violators Your ways, and sinners to You will return”, (Psalm 51:15).



לע"נ, הדוד ,שמואל בן נח ז"ל נלב"ע ט"ו אב תשס"ט,
Acknowledgements to websites: תורת אמת, וויקיטקסט, http://dictionary.reference.com/, http://hebrewbooks.org/,
וגם בדואר אלקטרוני  ניתן באתר http://dyschreiber.blogspot.co.il

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