Fair to Look Upon

by Mary Belle Freeley

It seems that no one had noticed, or dared to give voice to the thought, that David was becoming a dangerous rival of the great King, until the women, with keen penetration, looking upon the handsome David, saw there was a greater one than Saul. And so one day when David returned from a great slaughter of the Philistines, the girls came and danced and sung and waved their white hands and smiled, and despite the probable indignation of the King at the open preference and approval of the young man, they played and said, "Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands."

And Saul was jealous and "very wroth" and—well, that ended that friendship, and it wasn't the last time that women's smiles and honeyed words of praise have blighted the friendship between men "whose souls were knit together."

And there was a woman whose name was Bath-sheba, and she was very beautiful. Her midnight hair curled softly away from her snowy brow, her long black lashes hiding her love-lit eyes swept her rosy cheeks, and her light step dashed the dew from the grass in the garden, while the blossoms fell from the boughs to kiss her shoulders as she passed.

And one eventide, David, walking upon the roof of his palace, saw her bathing. And the last red rays of the sinking sun touched her softly and changed her into a perfect statue of warm pink marble, and David's soul was ravished by her beauty; and with the impetuosity of a king and the reckless passion of a lover he sought to beguile her. And Bath-sheba, flattered by the preference of the mighty King, allured by imperial grandeur and enticed by royal appeals, tried to forget the husband, who was off to the wars and away, and who had in the first flush of youth won her by his love, his "brow of truth" and a soul untouched by sin—but the King—the King, the pomp and the power!

Ambition was roused in her heart and she wanted to be clothed in the purple and fine linen of majesty, and to wear a jeweled crown upon her brow. And so she forgot a husband's love, a wife's honor, a woman's virtue, and while angels wept and devils laughed, the memory of Uriah vanished from her mind as a star vanishes before the fire-bursting storm-cloud.

Then black-browed conspiracy and red-handed murder, the boon companions of unholy love, whispered in their ears; and though a vision of Uriah often rose unbidden and unwelcome before her, it was dimmed and obscured by the glitter of jewels and the gleam of costly array, that should yet flash upon her arms and throat and clothe her limbs.

So David sent for Uriah (we presume with the consent, perhaps at the instigation of Bath-sheba, for there is no wickedness like the wickedness of an ambitious, faithless wife), honored and feasted him, and the favored young man, happily unconscious of his wife's treachery, perhaps dreaming bright waking dreams of the wealth, fame and power he would win to lay at Bath-sheba's feet, felt himself honored by being made a special envoy to carry a letter from the King to his greatest general, Joab—and in it the King wrote:

"Set ye Uriah in the fore-front of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten and die;" and Joab "assigned Uriah unto a place where he knew the valiant men were," and he was smitten and died.

And David and Bath-sheba were married, but surely, as they stood by the cradle of the little boy who died, the cold hands of the valiant, betrayed Uriah must often have pushed them asunder, and a dark shadow born of their guilty hearts must have passed between them and the child. Perhaps when the feast was the gayest a battle field rose before them, and when the music was the loudest and the sweetest, thrilling through it, they heard a dying moan.

When Joab wanted to reconcile David to Absalom, he wished a mediator with wit, tact and delicacy; with the eloquence of an orator and the subtle flattery of a Decius Brutus, and whom did he choose? A man? No: He sent for "a wise woman," and we read that he instructed her what to do, but judging from other women we are sure she instructed him—anyway she went to the King, and she talked like a lawyer, she plead with eloquence, she confessed charmingly, and she flattered with the cunning of her sex, saying, "for as an angel of God, so is my Lord the King to discern good and bad," and "my Lord is wise, according to the wisdom of an angel of God," which you will admit was putting it pretty strong. But then, men who didn't work for their living in those days were used to strong language—of praise. Perhaps it is superfluous for me to add that the "wise woman" accomplished her mission.