Repent

A few weeks ago I wrote about Psalm 7:12 – 16, the point was that living a life in rebellion to God is like falling in a pit you have dug.  What starts this is the entrenched commitment to stand one’s ground against God’s rebuke, the refusal to repent, verse 12.

2 Samuel 12:1 – 13 – you know the story – is Nathan’s confrontation of and David’s repentance from his actions surrounding Bathsheba and her husband, Uriah.  Focus on verses 9 – 10 for a moment.  Notice how Nathan characterizes David’s action.  He uses the word despise, Hebrew bzh, twice.  Nathan links David’s despising to both the Word of God and to the Person of God.  The implication is that one cannot despise one without despising the other.  God’s Word and God’s person are inseparable.  There is much more that could be said about this, as a matter of fact it would be a great exercise to spend some time thinking through and writing about the implications of that in your journal.

The word despise, Hebrew bzh, is an onomatopoeia, that means is sounds like what it does.  When you say that group of letters is sounds like you are spitting something out of your mouth, bzzzah.  You despise it, you want it away from you as quick as you can.  Think of the last time you tasted something disgusting, like really sour milk, what was your visceral reaction, you probably spit it out.  That is the force of this word.  Nathan said David’s sin was bzh, despising the Word of God and God as disgusting.  David got it immediately, his repentance was immediate.  We get Psalm 51 from the experience.  We also get a clear picture of what our sin really is and a model of our only appropriate response when we are confronted with it.

Not easy, but appropriate.