Nevertheless, because thou hast given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, for this thing, the child that is born to thee, shall surely die.

“If you like, however, I will give you further examples relating to our condition. Come then to the blessed David, and take him for your example of repentance. Great as he was, he suffered a fall. It was in the afternoon, after his siesta, that he took a turn on the housetop and saw by chance what stirred his human passion. He fulfilled the sinful deed, but his nobility, when it came to confessing the lapse, had not perished with the doing of the deed. Nathan the prophet came, swift to convict, but now as a healer for his wound, saying, "The Lord was angry, and you have sinned." So spoke a simple subject to his reigning sovereign. But David, though king and robed in purple, did not take it amiss, for he had regard not to the rank of the speaker but to the majesty of him who sent him. He was not puffed up by the fact that guardsmen were drawn up all around him, for the angelic host of the Lord came to his mind and he was in terror "as seeing him who is invisible." So he answered and said to the man that came to him, or rather, in his person, to the God whose messenger he was, "I have sinned against the Lord." You see this royal humility and the making of confession. Surely no one had been convicting him, nor were there many who knew what he had done. Swiftly the deed was done and immediately the prophet appeared as accuser. Lo! The sinner confesses his wicked deed, and as it was full and frank confession, he had the swiftest healing. For the prophet Nathan first threatened him, but then said immediately, "And the Lord has put away your sin." And see how quickly lovingkindness changes the face of God! Except that he first declares, "you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme" as though he said "you have many that are your foes because of your righteousness, from whom nevertheless, you were kept safe by your upright living. But as you have thrown away this best of armors, you have now, standing ready to strike, these foes that are risen up against you."So then the prophet comforted David as we have seen, but that blessed man, though he received most gladly the assurance, "The Lord has put away your sin," did not, king as he was, draw back from penitence. Indeed he put on sackcloth in place of his purple robe, and the king sat in ashes on the bare earth instead of on his gilded throne. And in ashes he did not merely sit, but took them for eating, as he himself says, "I have eaten ashes as it were bread, and mingled my drink with weeping." His lustful eye he wasted away with tears; as he says, "every night I wash my bed and water my couch with my tears." And when his courtiers exhorted him to eat food, he would not, but prolonged his fast for seven whole days.”

“Are you ashamed, sir, to do as David did—David, the king and the prophet, the ancestor of Christ according to the flesh? He was told of the rich man who had a great number of flocks and yet, when a guest arrived, took the poor man's one ewe lamb and killed it; and when he recognized that he was himself condemned by the story, he said, "I have sinned against the Lord." Therefore do not take it ill, sir, if what was said to King David is said to you, "You are the man." For if you listen with attention and say, "I have sinned against the Lord," if you say, in the words of the royal prophet, "O come, let us worship and fall down, and weep before the Lord our Maker," then it will be said to you also, "Because you repented, the Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die."”

“Indeed, to the penitent himself confession alone does not suffice, unless correction of the deed follows, with the result that the penitent does not continue to do deeds which demand repentance. He should even humble his soul just as holy David, who, when he heard from the prophet: "Your sin is pardoned," became more humble in the correction of his sin, so that "he did eat ashes like bread and mingled his drink with weeping."”

“And Nathan departed unto his house,.... His own house, which probably was in the city of Jerusalem, having delivered his message, and brought David to a sense of his sin, and declared to him from the Lord the forgiveness of it; yet for the honour of religion, and the stopping of the mouths of blasphemers, the death of the child is threatened and foretold, and then Nathan took his leave of him, having nothing more from the Lord to say to him: and the Lord struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David; for so she was, and not David's wife, when this child was begotten of her; and, as a mark of God's displeasure at the sin of adultery, the child was struck with a sore disease by the immediate hand of God: and it was very sick; even unto death, as the event showed.”

“Occasion. Literally, “made” almost, in the same sense, as God threatened to do, what was effected by Absalom, ver. 12. David did not co-operate with the malice of infidels; but he was responsible for it: in as much as he had committed an unlawful action, which gave them occasion to blaspheme God, as if he had not been able to foresee this scandalous transaction. Thus God and religion are often vilified, on account of the misconduct of those who have the happiness to be well informed, but do not live up to their profession: but this mode of argumentation is very fallacious and uncandid. It ought, however, to be a caution to the servants of the true God, never to do any thing which may have such fatal consequences; and alienate the minds of weak men from the truth. — Die. Thus infidels would see, that God did not suffer David to pass quite unpunished. (Haydock)”