What Does 2 Samuel 11:27 Mean?
And when the mourning had crossed over, David sent and gathered her into his house, and she became his wife, and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done was evil in the eyes of the LORD.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And when the mourning was past, David sent and fetched her to his house, and she became his wife, and bare him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.THE KEY
A wedding cannot turn a deed that is evil in the LORD’s sight into a good one.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks plainly now: a deed remains evil before the LORD even when mourning ends and its author gives the aftermath the form of marriage. That outward settlement does not erase the taking that came before it. David’s status cannot rename the deed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A powerful person cannot make a wrong clean by giving it a respectable ending.
THE ROOT
וַיֵּרַע
wayyēraʿ
GROWS FROM
רָעַע
rāʿaʿ
To be bad or evil.
“was evil in the eyes of” in this verse is wayyēraʿ. The KJV’s “displeased” conveys the LORD’s response; the Hebrew also names the deed itself as evil in the LORD’s eyes. That judgment still stands after the mourning ends and the marriage gives the aftermath an outwardly settled form.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Evil, bad.
רַע
This adjective names the quality the verse assigns to David’s deed.
mərēʿîm: Evildoers.
מְרֵעִים
This form from the same root applies the same moral word to those who do evil.
דָּוִד
Dāwid
GROWS FROM
דּוֹד
dōd
Beloved.
David’s name carries the nature of “the beloved,” but beloved status does not shelter his deed from judgment. The verse holds the king accountable for what he does.
ALSO GROWS
dōd: Beloved; beloved one.
דּוֹד
This is the root sense carried by David’s name.
dōdîm: Affections, caresses.
דּוֹדִים
The related word for intimate affection sharpens the contrast between the name’s beloved nature and the deed judged evil.
THE PATTERN
Outward arrangements cannot hide or rename a deed that the LORD sees as evil.
And the LORD saw that the harm of humankind was great in the earth, and that every shaping of the thoughts of his heart was only harm all the day.The eyes of the LORD are in every place, watching the harm and the good.For there is nothing covered that will not be uncovered, and nothing hidden that will not be known.THE THREAD
Why have you made light of the word of the LORD, to do evil in his eyes? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and you have taken his wife to be your wife, and you have slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon.Nathan uses the same רעע root when he names David’s act as evil in the LORD’s sight. He makes explicit what 11:27 already says: the deed remains evil after the mourning and marriage.
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