What is the meaning of 2 Samuel 12:11?

[Little_Tiger]

Hello! Could you please explain the meaning of this Scripture -
"Now, therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.
Thus says the LORD: I will bring evil upon you out of your own house. I will take your wives before your very eyes, and will give them to your neighbor: he shall lie with your wives in broad daylight.*
You have acted in secret, but I will do this in the presence of all Israel, in the presence of the sun itself.” 2 Samuel 12:10-12
Could you please explain how God could give David’s wives to another for sexual intercourse? How was something immoral not accomplished?

 

[Fr.Charles_Grondin]

It is perhaps best to understand this as God permitting something to happen rather than God causing something to happen. In essence God is permitting David to reap what he has sown. David acted with lust, arrogance and pride when he committed adultery with another man’s wife and had the husband killed. Lust, arrogance, and pride do not make for harmony in one’s family or in those around you. David therefore had planted the seeds for disaster and God chose to permit the disaster that David planted to come to fruition. It would indeed bloom when David’s son Absalom temporarily overthrew his father.

God’s laws are not simply arbitrary commands but rather are the path to the fullness of life (John 10:10) and we ignore them at our own peril (Deut 30:15-20).