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In 2 Samuel, Nathan tells David a story about a stolen lamb and lets the king pass judgment, then reveals David has condemned himself. A disguised prophet uses the same trick on Ahab in 1 Kings 20, where the verdict turns on the king.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
2 Samuel 12:7
Hebrew Bible
5 Then David became very angry at this man. He said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! 6 Because he committed this cold-hearted crime, he must pay for the lamb four times over!” 7 Nathan said to David, “You are that man! This is what the Lord God of Israel has said: ‘I chose you to be king over Israel and I rescued you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave you your master’s house, and put your master’s wives into your arms. I also gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all that somehow seems insignificant, I would have given you so much more as well!
1 Kings 20:40
Hebrew Bible
39 When the king passed by, he called out to the king, “Your servant went out into the heat of the battle, and then a man turned aside and brought me a prisoner. He told me, ‘Guard this prisoner. If he ends up missing for any reason, you will pay with your life or with a talent of silver.’ 40 Well, it just so happened that while your servant was doing this and that, he disappeared.” The king of Israel said to him, “Your punishment is already determined by your own testimony.” 41 The prophet quickly removed the bandage from his eyes, and the king of Israel recognized he was one of the prophets.
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Notes and References
... By addressing homicide and adultery in terms of theft, Nathan limits both the scope of the offense in the parable and makes it less serious. This strategy is followed by another prophet who challenges a king. For example, King Ahab’s wrongdoing in freeing an ‘enemy of the state’ (King Ben-hadad of Aram; see 1 Kings 20:1–34) is addressed by means of a far less serious parable concerning a careless guard (1 Kings 20:35–43). Nathan’s final masterstroke is to find a way of presenting this story as something that could have happened in real-life and as something that could credibly be brought to the king for adjudication. The factual plausibility of the story is important because David ‘will only be caught in the trap . . . if he truly believes that the story told him actually happened.’ ...
Burnside, Jonathan P.
God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible
(p. 314) Oxford University Press, 2011
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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