Can we say that committed adultery because king david took wives?

Answer 1

One could say anything, but accusing David of adultery is a simplistic take on a complex situation,

To adulterate is to introduce an illegitimate ingredient, a pollutant. Because King David married these women, he legitimozed the relationship with them. King David also took a number of concubines, and one could argue that he committed adultery with them.

Even that, however, is subject to interpretation. We are dealing with a theocracy, and David was the king. The law of the land demanded that if a woman were widowed, her brother-in-law was commanded to impregnate her, so that she would would have children to support her in her old age. It may be that the wives of King David were women who had no brother-in-law, and the concubines were women who had not yet been blessed with children.

It's highly unlikely that he had continuing sexual relations with all these women. The biological limits make it easier for one woman to exhaust several men than for one man to exhaust even one woman. On the other hand, the wealthy King David could have supported hundreds of wives, and made hundreds of concubines available for his army.

It's worth noting that the Ten Commandments does not prohibit fornication, Although it appears twice in The Bible in its original form, carved into stone by God, and a third time dictated by God after the original tablets were broken in anger, the Ten Commandments are the only part of the bible which are supposed to have been authored by God himself, and all three versions prohibit adultery, not fornication.

One might assume that God was illiterate, and did not know how to spell fornication, but a more reasonable explanation is that God's concern was with the breaking of a vow. The hebrew nation was formed by bringing together ten tribes, and it would be easy for them to fall apart again, so being able to trust each other was as essential as the sexual mutilation that marked the covenant.

In looking at the ten commandments, trustworthiness plays a significant role. One does not kill another jew, one does not steal from him, one repays his parents for the care they gave him as a child by caring for them in their old age, etc., lead to a cohesive nation, far more able to fight off foreign powers than the armies opposing it, where soldiers were not able to trust their fellow soldiers.