Montag, April 20, 2009

König David, Batsheva & Uriah

B"H

In Rabbi Yitzchak Lurias Lehren (u.a. zusammengefasst von seinem Schüler Rabbi Chaim Vital), heißt es im Buch "Shaar Hagilgulim - The Book of Reinkarnations":

König David (David HaMelech) war eine Reinkarnation des Adam. Batsheva war eine Reinkarnation der Eva (Chava) und Uriah, der Hittiter, war die Reinkarnation der Schlange.
Der Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Luria sieht hier den Grund, warum David den Uriah sterben liess. Damit die reinkarnierte Schlange (in Uriah) die Chava (Batsheva) nicht wieder verleiten kann.

Die Begründung mag banal klingen, dennoch ist nichts Gegenteiliges zu beweisen. Im Buch des Propheten Samuel (Schmuel) II (11 - 12) erfahren wir von der Begebenheit: Eines nachts steht König David auf dem Dach seines Palastes und sieht aus der Ferne eine sich badende Frau. Er findet heraus, dass es sich dabei um Batsheva, die Frau des Uriah, handelt. Weil David Batsheva unbedingt heiraten will, muss Uriah verschwinden und er arrangiert, das dieser im Kampf fällt. Danach nimmt David die Batsheva zur Frau. Daraufhin kommt der Prophet Natan zu David und lässt diesen wissen, was für ein abscheuliches Komplott er in den Augen G - ttes schmiedete. David wird sich seiner Tat bewusst und bittet G - tt um Verzeihung.

Raschi hingegen sieht in der Begebenheit die Verdeutlichung der Teschuva (Umkehr zu G - tt). Jeder, der sündigte hat immer die Möglichkeit ernsthaft zu bereuen und zu G - tt zurückzukehren. Und König David bereute bitterlich was er angerichtet hatte.

5 Kommentare:

  1. Anonym1:32 PM

    Hätte David wirklich aus tiefstem Herzen bereut, dann hätte er anschließend Batsheva nicht geheiratet.

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  2. B"H

    Wieso haette er das nicht tun sollen, wenn doch, lt. Kabbalah, ein Grund gegeben war, dass er und Batsheva zusammenkommen ?

    Halachisch waren Uriah und Batsheva in dem Moment seines Todes gar nicht mehr verheiratet, denn sobald ein jued. Soldat in den Krieg zog, uebergab er seiner Frau eine Scheidungsurkunde fuer den Fall, dass er im Krieg verschollen bleibt.

    Rabbi Nachman von Breslov gibt auf diese Frage eine brilliante Antwort:

    Rabbi Nachman of Breslov remarked that someone who does not understand why the Land of Israel had to be in the hands of the Canaanite nations before it came into the hands of the Children of Israel will also not be able to understand why Batsheva had to be married to Uriah the Hittite before she was married to David (Sichos HaRaN). From these words, we may infer that Batsheva was intended for David – for it had been prophesied to him already that he was destined to have a son who would build the Temple (II Samuel 7:12-13), and only a unique woman could mother the wisest man that ever lived. (Batsheva proved her strength of character in various ways, see I Kings 1:15ff; moreover, the Midrash says she had no compunction about chastising Solomon even after he became king.)

    The greatness of the TIKKUNIM ("repairs") that were destined to result from the union of Batsheva with David was such that the two could only come together in a manner overshadowed with darkness and mystery. David's sin was not the common man's sin of going into a woman who is NIDDAH ("menstruant"), because Batsheva was purifying herself in the Mikveh ("ritual pool") at the very moment when David saw her (v 2). Nor does the fact that the text makes it appear she was married to Uriah the Hittite mean that she was simply in the category of EISHES ISH ("a man's wife"). Although on the surface it looks as if David was guilty of adultery, this is not so. In David's time it was the practice of all men prior to going out to war to give their wives a GET ("bill of divorce"). The purpose was to ensure that if the husband went missing in the war, his wife would not become an AGUNAH ("anchored women", unable to marry anyone else) and that if he was killed and left no children, she would not be subjected to the humiliation of YIBUM or HALITZAH (levirate marriage). Soldiers could thus wholly throw themselves into fighting the war without having to worry what might happen to their wives if they lost their lives. The formula of the GET followed the standard formula of a GET AL TENAI ("conditional divorce") that made the divorce retroactive to the time of the giving of the GET in the event that the husband died in the war (Rashi on v 4; Talmud Kesuvos 9b; Rambam, Laws of Divorce ch 8). When Batsheva informed David that she had conceived, he sent for Uriah and ordered him to go into Batsheva (v 8) so that when the child was born Uriah would think it was his own, which would help cover up the scandal. It was only when Uriah refused to go into Batsheva while his brother Israelites were fighting a war that David contrived to have him killed. The death of Uriah in the war would cause his GET to Batsheva come into effect retroactively, as explained above, meaning that at the time of David's relations with her she was technically NOT a married woman.
    If the sin was NOT that Batsheva was a Niddah or a married woman at the time of the relations, what was it??? Did David sin in ordering Joab to send Uriah to a battle-position in the continuing Ammonite war in which he would certainly be killed? Our rabbis teach that Uriah was indeed guilty of a capital offense in refusing to carry out David's order to go into Batsheva. This made him MOREID BE-MALCHUS ("a traitor to the kingship") the penalty for which is death.
    Where David sinned was in contriving for Uriah to be killed in such a way as to make it seem that he was merely a war casualty, whereas in fact David should have taken Uriah before the Sanhedrin and had him publicly condemned to death (Shabbos 56a). However David did not want to do this as it would have drawn public attention to the questionable circumstances of his relations with Batsheva.
    It was not that Batsheva was not meant for David and that he took what was not his. The sin was that having caught a glimpse from his roof-top of the mother of Solomon, he took her by force and tried to hide what he was doing instead of waiting for God to bring her to him in the course of time. In this respect there is a certain parallel between David's sin and that of Moses' impatiently striking the rock for water instead of speaking to it.

    The real meaning of Nathan's reproof for David personally is not even our business. The average individual cannot expect to grasp the exact nature of David's sin. The prophet's reproof to the saintly David is directed at US, the average readers, who are to learn from it how to recognize our own sins and how to repent in order to rectify them. From verse 4, which successively refers to the rich man's visitor as a HEILECH ("passer-by"), then an ORE'AH ("visitor") and finally an ISH ("man of stature"), the rabbis learned out that the nature of the evil inclination is first to drop in casually as a passer-by, then to install himself within us as a long-term guest, until he finally takes over the entire house and acts as the BAAL HABAYIS ("owner of the house"; Succah 52b).
    Nathan the prophet used the parable of the rich man's taking the poor man's lamb in order to prompt David to see for himself where his sin lay and how he should be punished. Had Nathan simply asked David to consider his behavior and ask himself if he had done anything wrong, the king may have tried to rationalize away his actions. Instead, Nathan told David a graphic story about somebody else's gross behavior and asked him to give a quite impartial evaluation of this kind of behavior that would not be colored by the need to justify himself. Rabbi Nachman (Likutey Moharan I, 113) teaches that this is the method whereby God consults sinners about how they should be punished. If He were to ask them directly about their own behavior, they would never give an impartial reply and would always judge themselves too leniently. He therefore shows them someone else's behavior which is parallel to their own and then asks them how they judge it. According to their evaluation of the other person's deeds and how they should be penalized, so God judges and penalizes their own, and this is the meaning of the rabbinic statement that "a person is punished with his knowledge (MI-DAATO) yet without his knowledge" (SHELO MI-DAATO)" (Avos 3:16). We should be very careful when looking at and judging the behavior of others in case we are unknowingly being invited to decide our own fate.
    In angrily demanding that the rich man pay fourfold, David sealed his own fate: he suffered by losing four children – Batsheva's first baby, Amnon, Tamar and Absalom (Rashi on v 6).
    "Why have you despised the word of God to do evil in His eye?" (v 9). As explained above, the evil was not that Batsheva was already married or that she was not intended for David. The evil was that while knowing Batsheva was intended for him, David still contrived to take her using subterfuge. If Batsheva had not been intended for David, why after punishing him with the death of the baby did God allow Batsheva to conceive and bear a child of whom our text states that "HaShem LOVED him" (v 24)? According to the Midrash based on the KSIV "HE called" and the KRI of "SHE called" in v 24, it was not Batsheva but God Himself who called the child's name SHLOMO, which is also the Name of God throughout Song of Songs. If David's relationship with Batsheva was inherently evil, how could it be that the one who built God's very Temple was born as a result?
    David acknowledged that he sinned (v 13), and he fully repented: Psalm 51 is eloquent testimony to the depth and sincerity of David's repentance and his ability to turn the very sin into merit by using it to teach others the path of repentance. Whereas king Saul's sins led to his deposition from the kingship, David's kingship was not undermined by his sin, which indeed added a new dimension to David's Torah, showing that even a Tzaddik can sin and that even a Rasha (wicked person) can repent.
    With the birth of Solomon (who does not enter the narrative again until the very end of David's life), the protracted war against the Ammonites came to an end with David's capture and destruction of the capital city and his cruel punishment of the Ammonites (v 31). This was particularly severe because the Ammonite god alluded to in verse 30 ("the crown of MALKOM") and in the KSIV of verse 31 (MALKON as opposed to the KRI of MALBEIN) is none other than MOLEKH, whose worship through passing children through the fire is strictly proscribed by the Torah (Leviticus 18:21, see RaDaK on II Samuel 12:1).
    How David could have placed the crown of an idol on his own head when the appurtenances of idolatry are normally strictly forbidden is explained by the rabbis as having been made possible through the prior nullification of the Ammonite idol by a non-Israelite (Talmud Avodah Zarah 44a). How David could have balanced a such a heavy crown on his head (it weighed a talent of gold) is also discussed by the rabbis, some of whom say that it had a magnet in it that caused the crown to be self-suspended in the air! This is by no means the least of the weighty mysteries embedded within the fathomless allegory of these chapters.

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  3. Anonym7:38 AM

    hallo miriam
    wir muessen eines sicherstellen in der zeit von david ha melech haben sich alle von ihren frauen geschieden wenn man in den krieg gezogen ist weil wenn er ehemann faellt das die frau nicht agun(witwe )bleibt bzw fuer jedermann verboten ist und nicht heiraten darf bzw kann bestes beispiel ron arad !!!!!!
    also von dem her hat david ha melech nicht gesuendigt masechet schabbos steht "kola ha omer david hata eino ella toe we ein lo chelek le eloke israel" und als bestes beispiel das er nicht gesuendigt hat ist das ihr erstes kind ein nefel(fehlgeburt)das ist alles wegen marit ein das die leute sagen er hat es absichtlich getan und uriah an forderster front geschickt so von der halacha war er im recht
    gruss itzchak

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  4. Anonym7:41 AM

    ach ja und die sache mit natan dem profeten ist nur ein petach um uns zu zeigen wie g-tt tschuwa anerkennt und nichts steht dem tschuwa im weg man kann sogar sein ganzes leben awoda sarah doch wenn er tschuwa amiti macht wird ihm auch vergeben
    itzchak

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  5. B"H

    David Hamelech hat an der Stelle gesuendigt als er sich voreilig auf Batsheva "stuerzte". Ohne Zweifel war sie fuer ihn von Beginn an vorgesehen und die Kabbalah sieht Gruende, warum sie vorher Uriah heiraten musste. Dennoch haette David auf G - tt vertrauen warten sollen, bis es fuer ihn soweit ist. Sprich, wann G - tt ihm Batsheva zuteilt.
    Aber anstatt zu warten, uebereilte David die Dinge.

    David machte Teshuva (Umkehr zu G - tt), doch litt an dem Tod des Kindes.
    Haette G - tt die Beziehung zu Batsheva nicht gewollt, waeren alle Kinder aus der Ehe gestorben.

    Die Teshuva ist hier ein bedeutender Faktor, der uns verdeutlicht werden soll.
    Jeder hat die Moeglichkeit zu G - tt umzukehren und sollte niemals aufgeben.

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