What does 2 Samuel 12:2 mean?

Stories can be powerful tools for revealing great truths. One reason we find fiction so compelling is that it's in our nature to identify with the characters. We might resist the teaching of straightforward facts and ideas, but stories get behind the walls of our hearts and make us care.

Nathan is telling King David a parable about two men in another town (2 Samuel 12:1). One is rich and powerful. The other is poor. Wealth during this era was often measured by the number of animals owned. This man was rich in both flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. By the culture's definition of "rich," the man had far more than he needed. The foil of the story is a poor man. He's so poor he only has one little ewe lamb. But he's rich in love. He loves the lamb like a daughter. When the rich man steals her for a visitor's dinner, it's an outrageous injustice and cruelty (2 Samuel 12:3–4).

God sent Nathan to David to tell this story. Whether devised by God or Nathan, it's clever. David must understand his sin against Bathsheba and Uriah from his victims' point of view. The parable frames the incident in a world David knows well. For years, David protected sheep from powerful creatures that wanted to steal and kill them (1 Samuel 17:34–36). By the end of Nathan's story, David is as angry with the rich man as he would be with any lion or bear that threatened his own flock. He's been set up to accept that he is the predator in this tale (2 Samuel 12:7).