Nathan

Saint Nathan the Prophet was a prophet at the court of the kings David and Solomon, around 1000 before Christ, sent by God to rebuke David for his sin. He is mentioned in the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles. The Orthodox Church commemorates him on the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, before the Nativity of the Lord.

David's counsellor

Nathan first appears when David, king at Jerusalem, wishes to build a house for the Lord in place of the tent in which the ark stood. Nathan, seeing his good intention, tells him to do what is in his heart. That same night, however, God tells Nathan that David will not build the house, but his son will, and that the Lord will build David a "house": his throne will last forever. Nathan announces to the king what he heard (2 Samuel 7:1-17), and the Church has understood this prophecy as an announcement of Christ, born of the line of David.

The rebuke

After David sinned with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and ordered Uriah to be placed at the front of the battle and left to die, the Lord sent Nathan to the king. The prophet told him a parable: a rich man with many flocks took the one ewe lamb of a poor man to prepare a feast for a guest. David burned with anger and said that man must die. Nathan answered him, "You are the man." David confessed, "I have sinned against the Lord." Nathan told him that the Lord had put away his sin, but that the child born of Bathsheba would die, and the sword would not depart from his house. David's repentance is sung in Psalm 50, whose title says it was spoken "when Nathan the prophet came to him." The prayer of absolution in the Mystery of Confession recalls that God pardoned David through Nathan when he confessed his sin.

Solomon and the Temple

After the death of the child, Solomon was born, to whom Nathan gave, from the Lord, the name Jedidiah, "beloved of the Lord." When Adonijah, David's son, wished to proclaim himself king while David was old, Nathan advised Bathsheba to go to David and remind him of his oath concerning Solomon, and he himself confirmed her words. David ordered that Solomon be anointed king by Nathan and the priest Zadok. Chronicles says that Nathan wrote the history of the reigns of David and Solomon, and that through him and through Gad God appointed the service of the Levites in the Temple (2 Chronicles 29:25). Two of his sons, Azariah and Zabud, held offices under Solomon.

Veneration

No details of his death are preserved. The Church honours him as a prophet of the Old Testament and, on the Sunday before the Nativity, remembers him together with David and the other ancestors of the Lord.