The Living Death of Sin's Consequences Text: 2 Samuel 20:3
Introduction: The Lingering Stain
We live in a therapeutic age that despises consequences. Our culture wants a gospel of cheap grace, a God of infinite mulligans, where sin is treated like a minor misstep that can be erased without a trace. We want forgiveness to be a cosmic reset button that not only cancels the debt but also magically repairs all the damage, removes all the scars, and pretends the whole sordid affair never happened. But that is not the world God made, and it is not the story the Bible tells.
David's life is a master class in the reality of sin, repentance, forgiveness, and the relentless march of consequences. When Nathan the prophet confronted David over his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah, he pronounced both God's forgiveness and God's sentence. "The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die" (2 Samuel 12:13-14). The sword, Nathan said, would never depart from his house. Forgiveness was real, but the consequences were just as real. They were not punitive in the sense of earning salvation, but they were the necessary, disciplinary, and natural outworking of his sin in a world governed by a holy God.
The rebellion of Absalom was the bitter fruit of this judgment. David's sin had poisoned his own family, and the kingdom reaped the whirlwind. Absalom's public violation of his father's concubines on the palace roof was a direct, in-your-face fulfillment of Nathan's prophecy: "I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun" (2 Samuel 12:11). Now, with Absalom dead and the rebellion crushed, David returns to Jerusalem. He is the victorious king, restored to his throne. But the wreckage of his sin is still there, waiting for him on his own doorstep. This brings us to the quiet, heartbreaking, and deeply instructive scene in our text.
This single verse is a portrait of the lingering stain of sin. It is a picture of a difficult and painful decision, a decision that navigates the complexities of justice, mercy, public testimony, and personal grief. In David's handling of these ten women, we see a king grappling with the visible, shameful reminders of his own failure and his son's treachery. And in this, we are taught a hard but necessary lesson about the far-reaching consequences of our sin and the difficult wisdom required to govern in a fallen world.
The Text
Then David came to his house at Jerusalem, and the king took the ten women, the concubines whom he had left to keep the house, and placed them under guard and provided them with sustenance, but did not go in to them. So they were shut up until the day of their death, living as widows.
(2 Samuel 20:3 LSB)
The Painful Homecoming (v. 3a)
The verse begins with David's return to the seat of his power and the heart of his home.
"Then David came to his house at Jerusalem, and the king took the ten women, the concubines whom he had left to keep the house..." (2 Samuel 20:3a)
This should have been a moment of pure triumph. The usurper is dead, the rebellion is over, and the king is home. But the joy is immediately tempered by this grim task. Before he can fully re-establish his reign, he must deal with the living monuments of his shame. These ten women were not just household servants; they were his concubines, part of his royal household, left as a sign of his continuing authority. When David fled, he left them "to keep the house," to maintain his claim on the palace. They were symbols of his possession.
Absalom understood this perfectly. Ahithophel's wicked counsel to publicly violate these women was a calculated act of political theater. It was designed to be an unforgivable insult, a final severing of ties between father and son, intended to show all of Israel that Absalom's claim to the throne was total and irrevocable. He was not just sitting on David's throne; he was possessing David's harem, a definitive act of supplanting the king. The act, performed in a tent on the roof in the sight of all Israel, was a deliberate and public desecration of David's honor, kingship, and person.
Now, these women stand before David. They are not guilty of rebellion. They were victims, pawns in a brutal power play between a rebellious son and a disgraced father. They were publicly defiled, and their status is now a tangled mess. What is the king to do? Every time he looks at them, he is reminded of three things: his own sin with Bathsheba that started this whole catastrophic chain of events, the fulfillment of God's judgment through Nathan, and the treason of his beloved son Absalom. This is not a simple administrative task; it is a deeply personal and painful duty.
A Judgment of Prudence and Pain (v. 3b)
David's solution is a stark and sorrowful one, a mixture of provision and separation.
"...and placed them under guard and provided them with sustenance, but did not go in to them." (2 Samuel 20:3b LSB)
Let us break down what David does here. First, he does not execute them. There is no indication they were willing participants. They were overpowered and used. To put them to death would have been a gross injustice, punishing the victim for the crime of the perpetrator. David, who knows what it is to be both a great sinner and a recipient of mercy, extends a form of mercy here. He spares their lives.
Second, he provides for them. He "provided them with sustenance." He does not cast them out to fend for themselves, which would have been a death sentence of another kind. He accepts his lifelong responsibility for their welfare. They were part of his household, and he honors that obligation by ensuring they are fed and cared for. This is an act of justice and basic decency.
But third, he separates them. He "placed them under guard" and "did not go in to them." This is the hard part of the decision. Why does he do this? We must understand the world he lived in. These women were now a public symbol. To take them back into his bed would be, in a sense, to take Absalom's leftovers. It would be a constant, private reminder of his humiliation, and it would ignore the public nature of their defilement. In the Old Covenant, ceremonial and physical realities had a public weight that we often fail to grasp. Their public violation made them, in a sense, untouchable for the king. For David to resume relations with them would be to treat Absalom's heinous act as a trivial matter. It would dishonor the office of the king and the sanctity of the royal household.
This was not an act of personal spite against the women. It was a painful necessity of kingship in a fallen world. The "guard" was likely for their protection as much as for their seclusion. They were living reminders of a national trauma, and David sequesters them to remove that constant, visible source of shame and grief from public life and from his own life. It is a prudential judgment, an attempt to govern wisely in the aftermath of a catastrophe.
Living in Widowhood (v. 3c)
The verse concludes with a summary of their tragic state.
"So they were shut up until the day of their death, living as widows." (2 Samuel 20:3c LSB)
This is the heartbreaking reality of their situation. "Living as widows," or as the Hebrew can be rendered, "in the widowhood of life." Their husband was alive, but for all practical purposes, he was dead to them. They were caught in a state of living death. They could not remarry, as they were still legally bound to the king. But they would never again know the companionship or intimacy of marriage. They were casualties of a war they did not start, collateral damage from the sins of others.
Their fate is a stark illustration of how sin ripples outward. David's sin in secret with Bathsheba led to Absalom's sin in public with these concubines, which in turn led to their lifelong confinement. Our sin is never a private affair. It is like a stone thrown into a pond; the ripples extend far beyond the initial splash, often harming the innocent in ways we never intended or foresaw. These ten women lived out their days as a solemn, silent sermon on the enduring consequences of sin.
Was David's solution perfect? From our modern, individualistic perspective, it seems harsh. We want a solution that prioritizes the personal fulfillment of these women. But David was a king, and he had to think about the stability of the kingdom, the honor of his office, and the public testimony of his rule. His decision, while personally agonizing for all involved, was an attempt to cauterize a festering wound. It was an act of governance that recognized the terrible public reality of what had happened. He chose a path that was merciful in sparing their lives and just in providing for them, but also severe in its recognition of the public stain that could not be washed away.
The Gospel for the Walking Wounded
This is a grim story. It is a story of victims caught in the gears of sin and power, left to live out a half-life of sorrow and seclusion. Where is the good news in this? The good news is found when we see this situation as a picture of our own state apart from Christ, and see how He provides a radically different solution.
Like these concubines, we have been defiled. We have been violated by our own sin and the sin of our father, Adam. We have been publicly shamed, rendered unclean and unfit for the presence of the King. Sin has rendered us "widows of life," separated from our true husband, God, with no hope of restoration in ourselves. We are shut up, confined under the guard of the law, which provides for us in a sense (common grace) but ultimately only pronounces our separation and death.
But then Christ, the true David, the greater King, comes home to His palace. And what does He do with us, His defiled, shamed, and unclean people? He does not do what David did, because He is a better King with a better covenant. He does not shut us up in seclusion. He does not provide for us from a distance. He does the unthinkable.
He takes our shame upon Himself. He goes to the cross, and there He is publicly stripped and humiliated, bearing the full weight of our defilement. He becomes unclean for us. And then, in His resurrection, He does not just provide for us; He comes in to us. He takes us as His bride. He washes us clean, not with water, but with His own blood. He removes the stain completely. He doesn't just put us under guard; He sets us free. He doesn't condemn us to a life of widowhood; He invites us to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
The law of the Old Covenant, which David was bound to honor, could only manage sin's consequences. It could quarantine the uncleanness to prevent its spread. But the gospel of the New Covenant cures it. Christ touches the leper and makes him clean. He is touched by the unclean woman and makes her whole. He takes the publicly shamed, the collateral damage, the walking wounded of this world, and He does not just put them on life support. He raises them to new life and brings them into His chambers, to live with Him forever. David's solution was the best a fallen king could do under the law. Christ's solution is what a perfect Savior does through grace.