Why did God kill Bathsheba's innocent baby for David’s wrongdoing?

[tonychanyt]

David had an affair with Bathsheba. She got pregnant. God judged David. Nathan delivered the message in 2S 12:

9 "Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, because you have despised me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.’ 11 Thus says the Lord, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun. 12 For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the sun.’”

There would be a series of severe consequences.

13 David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 Nevertheless, because by this deed you have utterly scorned the Lord, the child who is born to you shall die.” 15 Then Nathan went to his house.

It got even worse:

15 After Nathan had gone home, the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill. 16 David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying in sackcloth on the ground. 17 The elders of his household stood beside him to get him up from the ground, but he refused, and he would not eat any food with them.

God used the condition of the sick child to punish David.

18 On the seventh day the child died.

The child suffered for days before he died.

Why did God kill Bathsheba's innocent baby for David’s wrongdoing?

I don't know, but I know this: God is sovereign. He does whatever he pleases, and whatever he does is, by definition, just. I am not going to question God's infinite wisdom. I am glad that I am not God.

 

[Mark Quayle]

David had an affair with Bathsheba. She got pregnant. God judged David. Nathan delivered the message in 2S 12:


There would be a series of severe consequences.


It got even worse:


God used the condition of the sick child to punish David.


The child suffered for days before he died.

Why did God kill Bathsheba's innocent baby for David’s wrongdoing?

I don't know, but I know this: God is sovereign. He does whatever he pleases, and whatever he does is, by definition, just. I am not going to question God's infinite wisdom. I am glad that I am not God.

God is altogether just. I wouldn't quickly call the child 'innocent' —such judgements are a little too easily human-driven. But even in that opinion we can still trust that the child, if God chooses to keep him for his own, will be more than compensated for his suffering. And if not, that it is better to suffer in this life, than in the next.

We also know that God did not punish the child for David's wrongdoing, but that the child suffered and died for God's own reasons —not as the child's punishment, but (as you said) as David's, as we see by the demonstration of David's agony of soul.

Another thought that seems to come to me more often these days: One reason God did what he did was so that we would have this very conversation!

 

[tonychanyt]

We also know that God did not punish the child for David's wrongdoing, but that the child suffered and died for God's own reasons

How do you know that?

 

[Mark Quayle]

How do you know that?

Not that a negative proves anything, but the text does not say that God punished the child, while it does imply that it is God's punishment of David for what he had done, (though apparently not punishment directly for sin, which Nathan told David was forgiven him —lol, echoes of 1 Jn 1:9 (already forgiven, contingent on confession?), but a necessary result of public sin done 'in secret', maybe pretended to cause no harm to God's people by the sin of their king.)

The hard things/suffering people go through are not always —maybe not even usually— punishment of the person going through it, but training, culling/trimming, shaping, growing, and otherwise using the person for God's own purposes.