Go on and compare it to another Old Testament story. Abraham and Issac. But there, God doesn’t attempt to kill the kid. He subcontracts it out. And in that story, Abraham wasn’t even doing anything worthy of Yahweh’s wrath. God just felt funny that day and thought a father taking a sword to his kid was the height of hilariousness.
Lesson: God works in mysterious ways. Ooooooh. Spooky.
“You know, Issac, we don’t have to tell your Mother about this…”
Keep in mind, your Norse gods are a pretty hyper and belligerent bunch. Though one was low-key.
Loge is my favorite. He is an advocate for the Rhinemaidens, tricks Alberich, and is the only god to survive the opera Gotterdammerung.
I’ve explained my opinion on this story before. The point of the story was that Abraham was supposed to defy God. He was supposed to tell God that murder was wrong even if an superior authority like God told you to do it. The lesson was supposed to be always follow God’s laws even if somebody else - even God himself - tells it’s okay to break them.
But Abraham screwed up. He immediately submitted to authority and did what he was told even though he should have known better. God sighed in disappointment that Abraham didn’t get it and called off the actual murder.
Chroniclers missed this point. They didn’t want to imagine that Abraham made a mistake so they tried to explain this story in terms that he had done the right thing. (And being religious authorities themselves, the message that you shouldn’t blindly obey religious authorities went right over their heads.)
Some Rabbi, somewhere, said that G-d was showing graphically that human sacrifice is wrong.
But I still prefer “shit happens.”
I can just see it.
G-d: “Wait, 'Plant, don’t kill Skald! There is a ram stuck in the bushes!”
Plant: WHACK! “Sorry, G-d, what was that?”
G-d: “Never mind.”
What I find interesting is part of David’s punishment was to take from him his polygamous wives and give them to his neighbor.
As for the baby…
Frankly, all of us die, so a child dying early is not a real shocker. Considering the potential illness’ and life of a person of the era, it may have been a blessing. For sure the child was blessed by his early departure from this life.
Who knows that a consequence of the first birth of David and Bathsheba was going to die anyway?
NM
It seems to me that most posters here are not really interested in understanding why God acted as He did in this case, but only want to find fault with God.
Under the then Law, David and Bathsheba would have been executed(Child in womb). God, intervened and spared David and Bathsheba, but not the illegitimate child. For sure a difficult thing to understand. I trust God had very good reasons.
Why? How do you reconcile “You cannot know the mind of God” with “I trust God had very good reasons”, especially when he does something that would definitely be highly immoral if done by us lesser human beings? It’s almost as if every Christian out there is really saying “You cannot know the mind of God…but He and I have this “understanding”, if you know what I mean.”
Atheist here. So nyah.
But it sounds like Nate the great was sent there not as a prophet but as Judge Judy and Executioner. David had sinned and then repented. However, repentance is not enough and believing that there needs to be consequences for David’s actions, the unnamed(?) baby was God’s just* reward for David’s actions.
Since David had Uriah killed, God had something David loved killed. An eye for an eye. Sure, it would make more sense to have David killed, but that would make for a shorter story.
Really? You mean he was supposed to know that when GOD HIMSELF told him to do something, he still shouldn’t do it because it was against God’s rules? So you basically had this scenario:
God: “I’m God. I’m totally in charge. Do exactly what I say. Don’t kill people.”
Abraham: “Okay, no killing people.”
God: “Kill your son. Remember, I’m totally in charge and you have to do what I say. I’m God.”
Abraham: “Well, okay then. I’ll kill him.”
God: “I’m so disappointed.”
How can you “always follow God’s laws even if somebody else - even God himself - tells it’s okay to break them?” That’s illogical. God sets the rules but you’re supposed to tell God that he can’t change them or his interpretation is wrong? Who are you to tell God no? He’s GOD, for God’s sake.
[quote=“Skald_the_Rhymer, post:1, topic:604620”]
What’s with the masculine hairstyle?
Actually, there would have been no such rule, at least not as religious writ. And given the history of human sacrifice in the early history fo the region, it wouldn’t necessarily have even been that unusual. What was unusual is that the Lord said, “Don’t do that. You sacrifice sheep, my friend.” Remember, the Jews’ next-door neighbors were carrying out human sacrifices for centuries more.
Now, I would disagree with Little Nemo. Frankly, the Jews (and probably nobody in the world) hadn’t gone as far as independant moral philosophy yet. Abraham couldn’t be expected to view commands from the Lord as bullying. However, he could be proved in his faith. Therefore, the test to him was his faithfulness. Then Moses gave the Law that they had to obey even when God wasn’t tellign them what to do, and the Lord tested the constancy of the Jews with trials and tribulations when they failed, and eventually sent the adopted son of a Carpenter to mention something about mercy over sacrifice or something of that nature, and even more prophets and saints in the years to come.
But all that came after wasn’t Abraham’s lot. He was tested in the way he could be tested: was he willing to obey even when he didn’t understand and told to do something painful. Isaac, no less, willingly submitted.
[quote=“Acsenray, post:73, topic:604620”]
Probably the current style of the model.
Looks rather like Alma-Tadema.
Though his faults are legion, Skald does have good taste in art. 
There’s a difference between a law and an order. You can be given an unlawful order even by somebody who enacted the law.
God would have known he wasn’t going to be constantly telling people directly what to do. So he laid down laws that people could follow without his personal guidance. But God would also be aware that some people would step in and start claiming to be God’s representative who had authority derived from God. And some of these authorities would order people to do things that violated God’s law. So God wanted to put forth the message to stick with what the laws say.
I always felt that Exodus 4 offered a contrast with Genesis 22. The passage in Exodus is very brief and somewhat confusing but it’s clear that God wants somebody to be killed and Zipporah defies him. And God essentially says “Okay, no problem.”
I think that again, the Chroniclers didn’t want to think about the implications of what happened. They didn’t want to admit that a woman who wasn’t even an Israelite had done the right thing when Abraham had failed the test. So again, they interpreted the story in a way they were more comfortable with and claimed this was a message about the importance of circumcision.
OK, so according to God’s law, David and Bathsheba deserved death, and if Bathsheba was pregnant then her unborn baby would die with her.
Except, the baby was not unborn. It was born. The child was a product of sin, but was not sinful himself. But God didn’t kill the sinners, David and Bathsheba. Instead he killed the baby. But your only answer is that even though you don’t know the reason this was justice, you know it must be justice, because it came from God and you trust God.
The only answer to this puzzle is that God kills everyone, like I said before. And he eventually got around to killing David and Bathsheba, and if the baby had lived and grown up and become a man and married and had children and lived a full life, the baby would eventually die sooner or later, because every human being is fated to die under God’s plan. If everyone dies, then dying sooner or later can’t be unjust because everyone is dead for exactly the same amount of time: forever.
The trouble with this viewpoint is that it reduces our Earthly lives to meaninglessness. Why the heck would God put us through this puppet-show? The answer of course is that God doesn’t put us through anything, we don’t die and suffer because God commands it, we die and suffer because we are material creatures in an indifferent material universe and if it turns out that there is something in the universe that could be labeled “God” that something is utterly unconcerned with human lives and sufferings and deaths.
Now wait a minute. God and lawyers?
All the lawyers are in the Other Place.
The god you worship is evil.
[quote=“Acsenray, post:73, topic:604620”]
Do I look like Gérôme to you?
Anyway,
[dirty middle-aged man]
it’s like Natalie Portman posing for cheesecake after getting her locks shorn for Vendetta. Bathsheba was so hot the short hair didn’t matter. And as this painting is presumably from David’s point of view, I assure you he was not looking at her head. 
[/dirty middle-aged man]
