On February 14, 2025, Stephen Craig Campbell, 76, was arrested after more than 40 years of evading capture for a bomb he planted in 1982—an attempt to injure or kill his ex-wife’s boyfriend. For over four decades, Campbell successfully used the identity of a fellow engineering classmate who had died in 1975 in a vehicular accident. Campbell applied and received a social security card, social security payments, and a passport and driver’s license in the deceased’s name. In 2019, he renewed his driver’s license in New Mexico, the system caught the discrepancy, and he was arrested on his 44-acre property in Weed, New Mexico. His elaborate ruse could not prevent eventual detection and arrest.
Just as Campbell went to great lengths to hide his crime, we sometimes do the same with our sin—playing a game with ourselves, God, and others. Recently, in reading through 2 Samuel 11, I was intrigued, convicted, and warned as I watched how David covered his tracks after his sin with Bathsheba.1 Here are five examples of his fancy footwork:
1. He sends for Uriah and inquires about the battle (v. 7).
“When Uriah had come to him, David asked how Joab was doing, and how the people were doing, and how the war prospered.”
David feigns interest in the battle (which would be secondary at most) while primarily devising a way to send Uriah home. He is manipulating the conversation for ulterior motives. We should beware of our motives when we find ourselves conversing about things we don’t really care about or asking questions for which we already know the answers in order to accomplish an agenda we are hiding from our conversant.
2. He sends a gift home with Uriah (v. 8).
“And David said to Uriah, ‘Go down to your house and wash your feet.’ So Uriah departed from the king’s house, and a gift of food from the king followed him.”
Total pretense! David is acting as if he is seeking good for Uriah. His gift is really a way to couch his evil intent toward Uriah (to “pawn” off on Uriah a baby that would not be his). Do we ever cloak our evil intentions through gifts or gestures of goodwill? Do we ever do so to evade wrongdoing that we do not want exposed?
3. He detains Uriah an extra day and makes him drunk (v. 13).
“Now when David called him, he ate and drank before him; and he made him drunk. And at evening he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house” [emphasis mine].
On the one hand, we might argue that David could not make Uriah drunk. However, this is the language the Scripture uses: David made Uriah drunk! In so doing, the Lord is suggesting to us that David used his position of authority and Uriah’s humble subservience to his king to push Uriah to a level of inebriation that Uriah would not have chosen on his own. We should beware of the danger of using—we could say, abusing—a position of influence or authority to conceal personal wrong(s) committed. David is willing to sacrifice another man’s convictions to cover his own tracks.
4. He asks Joab to choose between loyalty to him and loyalty to his troops (v. 15).
“And he wrote in the letter, saying, ‘Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retreat from him, that he may be struck down and die.’”
David asks Joab to do something militarily or strategically that is unwise—that even Joab’s own men would question. David is, in a sense, putting Joab’s reputation as a general on the line. David is willing to sacrifice another man’s reputation to save his own. Do we ever see a similar tendency lurking in our own hearts? Am I so desperate to escape detection that I will sacrifice another’s reputation?
5. He “poses as Joab’s mild and understanding superior”2 (v. 25).
David instructed the messenger: “Thus you shall say to Joab: ‘Do not let this thing displease you, for the sword devours one as well as another. Strengthen your attack against the city, and overthrow it.’ So encourage him” (v. 25).
This is all charade! Joab does not need encouragement, and David knows it. He is playing a game with God, himself, and others. At this point, he is playing a high-stakes game. He has not just committed adultery and fathered a child illegitimately. He has plotted the death of a man.
Thankfully, the Lord does not allow David’s fancy footwork to prevail. Nathan exposes David’s heinous action for the sin it is (2 Samuel 12:7). Thankfully, David responds with humility and repentance to Nathan’s “Thou art the man” (v. 13).
We also should be thankful when the Lord’s messengers—whether a pastor, a colleague, a friend, a spouse, or a child—show us where we have sinned and expose our crafty efforts to cover our tracks. And when we confess our sins, as David did, we experience with him the same blessedness:
“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (Psalm 32:1–2).
1 Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
2 Joyce G. Baldwin, 1 and 2 Samuel: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 8, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), p. 251. Baldwin is quoting J. P. Fokkelman.
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