Q. David, a “man after God’s own heart,” had concubines, plus many wives. How? Was it said of him that he was a “man after God’s heart” before he took these women, possibly for sexual pleasure? Was it sin to have these concubines and wives … of course, right? Did David write his psalms before he lived like this? I’m struggling to read the Psalms as I did before I had these questions. In church, David is like a hero. He’s called a “man after God’s own heart.” He’s described as “repentant.” Yet he never repented of his polygamy. I was raised in church all my life. It’s always talked up how great David was, but his polygamy is never discussed. Why not? Why didn’t Nathan the prophet point out that ongoing sinful lifestyle he was living out? Ugh.
Thank you for your question. I can certainly appreciate the difficulty you are having reconciling what you have been told all your life about David—that he was just the kind of man God wants men to be—with the impression that David used multiple women for sexual pleasure in an ongoing way.
Let me assure you, first of all, that this is not what God wants men to be. The consistent teaching of the Bible is that men should treat women with honor and respect, not as sexual objects, but as persons of dignity, as joint heirs of the grace of life. Jesus warned men not even to look at women lustfully; he told them it would be better to pluck their eyes out than to keep doing that. Paul wrote to Timothy, his younger protege, “Treat … older women as mothers and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.”
So how, then, is David called a “man after God’s own heart”? I think the problem is with the way that phrase is being understood and taught. This is one of those phrases that has been lifted out of the King James Version and given a life of its own with a changed meaning. In contemporary American culture, “a person after my own heart” means “just the kind of person I like best.” But that is not what the phrase means in the Bible. It does not refer to David’s character. It refers to his will.
In the context of the phrase, the “heart” stands for the desires, for what a person wants. There is a similar use in 1 Samuel 14:7, only a short time in the biblical narrative after Samuel applies the phrase to David. Saul’s son Jonathan, the crown prince of Israel, wants to attack the Philistines. His armor bearer says to him, “Do all that is in your heart, I am with you according to your heart.” In other words, “Do everything that you want to do, because I will do what you want to do.”
So when Samuel tells Saul in 1 Samuel 13:14, “The Lord has sought for himself a man according to his heart … because you have not obeyed what the Lord commanded you,” this actually means, “The Lord has sought for himself a man who will do what he wants him to do, because you have not done what the Lord wanted you to do.” Paul brought out this meaning when he alluded to this statement in his sermon in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch: “God testified concerning him, ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.'”
So, as I said, the phrase applies not to David’s character but to David’s will. God meant that when he gave David commands regarding what he should do as king in specific situations, David would obey them. We see this illustrated, for example, in 2 Samuel 5:17–25, where God gives David one set of instructions about how to defeat the Philistines and then, when the same circumstances arise, David goes back to God for instructions, God tells him to do something different, David obeys, and once again he defeats his enemies.
So this, I hope, will at least address the concern about David. We do not need to look to him as an example of everything that God wants a man to be. We simply need to see him as a mostly consistent example of obeying direct commands that he received from God.
But I imagine that this leaves you with another concern—about God. If David would indeed obey direct commands from God, then why didn’t God command David not to keep practicing polygamy?
Actually, God did. God commanded through Moses that future Israelite kings were not to have many wives. God also commanded the king to have a copy of the law of Moses and “read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees.” David, in effect, should have known better. And it seems that he did pay a great price for not following this law. He married one of his wives, Maakah, the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur, in order to make an alliance with that king. Maakah’s firstborn son, Absalom, eventually led a bloody revolt to try to take the throne away from his father David. Absalom failed and was killed, but this tore the kingdom apart and left David heartbroken for the rest of his life.
We may add that in addition to forming marriage alliances with other kingdoms, kings married multiple wives in order to have many children and ensure that they would have a successor on the throne. David outlived his three oldest sons, so we see why this was a concern. But it must also be acknowledged that having many wives and concubines was an ungodly expression of royal entitlement. We may well wonder whether David not having to practice sexual restraint by remaining faithful to one wife contributed to a sense that he could have any woman he wanted, helping lead to his grievous sin against Bathsheba and Uriah.
So why, indeed, did God not command David directly to repent of polygamy? This is a legitimate concern, and it should be acknowledged as such in church—in preaching. We don’t have to understand everything in the Bible to our satisfaction; I don’t think we ever will in this life. But we should acknowledge that there are things in the Bible that are troubling even for Christians of good will who are committed to the authority and inspiration of the Scriptures. I would hope that this issue would be acknowledged in that way.
If I had to try to answer the question of why God did not directly command David to repent of polygamy, I would say that it seems that, for reasons we do not understand fully, God accommodated certain cultural practices as his redemptive plan unfolded, knowing that the unfolding of the plan would itself ultimately bring these practices to an end among the community of believers and, from there, throughout the world. I have discussed this more fully in the following post, which I invite you to read: What does allowing polygamy say about the character of God?
I hope all of this has been helpful to you. You have a legitimate concern that should be acknowledged.
Good Question 