7. The manner in which David obtained his first wife Michal is shocking to all who possess kind and philanthropic feelings. Saul had proposed a hundred foreskins of the Philistines as the price of his daughter; but David, in wanton cruelty, killed two hundred for this purpose.
8. The manner in which David obtained his beautiful wife Bathsheba, to add to his list of wives, might be tolerated in that era of barbarism; but it must be looked upon at the present time as an act of cruelty and wickedness. He said to Joab, "Set Uriah in the front of the battle... that he may be smitten and die" (2 Sam. xi. 15); which was equivalent to slaying him with his own hands, and for no crime, but solely to get his widow for a wife.
9. Thus, we see, David was not only a polygamist, but he obtained his wives by fraud, murder, and intrigue.
10. David's dancing naked in public was an indecent act, although several cases are reported of "the holy" men of that age appearing in public in a state of nudity. His wife Michal upbraided him for "uncovering himself to the eyes of the handmaids, his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself" (2 Sam. vi.). It is said that "David danced before the Lord with all his might." Can we suppose the Lord would fancy such sights?
11. David's treatment of the Moabites in killing two-thirds of them without any just provocation is an act that would hang any man of the present day (2 Sam. viii.).
12. The fiendish act of David in placing the Moabites under saws and harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and making them walk through brick-kilns (2 Sam. xii.), bespeaks a heart callous with cruelty, unmerciful as a tiger. The very thought of it is calculated to chill the blood of a person with the feelings of common humanity.
13. David's murder of five step-sons and two brothers-in-law, to gratify a malignant grudge toward the house of Saul, is another act showing the fiendish character of the man.
14. When David was so old and stricken in years that no amount of bed-clothing could keep him warm, he made this a plea for marrying another wife—and a young maid at that—to lie in his bosom him warm (1 Kings i. 1). Lust knows no failure in expedients.
15. David's advice to his son Solomon on his death-bed, to assassinate Joab and his other enemies, shows that his ruling passions—animosity and revenge—were strong in death.
16. And finally David's wicked prayer, as found in the hun-dred and ninth Psalm, in which he invokes a string of the most horrid curses upon his enemies, culminates his immoral history. It completes the demoralizing picture of the "man after God's own heart." Now, we ask in solemn earnest, is it not evident that a book indorsing such characters as David, placed in the hands of the heathen of other countries or the children of our own, must have a demoralizing tendency? Most certainly, if