Powerful leaders who lie are as old as the Bible. Our Haftarah tomorrow, King David’s song of gratitude to God (2 Samuel 22:1-51), contains a big fat lie—a lie so obvious, so brazen, that one wonders how he had the temerity to utter it. King David says of himself:

The Lord rewarded me according to my merit,

He requited the cleanness of my hands.

For I have kept the ways of the Lord

And have not been guilty before my God;

I am mindful of all His rules

And have not departed from His laws.

I have been blameless before Him,

And I have guarded myself against sinning—

And the Lord has requited my merit,

According to my purity in His sight.

We know all these words are blatantly, outrageously false. King David committed adultery with Batsheba. He committed murder, having her honorable and courageous husband Uriah put on the front lines so that Uriah would be killed in battle. King David violated Uriah’s trust, having Uriah carry the executive order of the King to the general demanding that Uriah be put in the most dangerous spot in battle—Uriah carried his own death warrant because he was so trusting of his king.

We also know that King David was not blameless before God. God sent the prophet Nathan to chastise King David and to pronounce a curse upon him and his household.

Therefore the sword shall never depart from

your House—because you spurned Me by taking

the wife of Uriah the Hittite and making her your wife.

Thus said the Lord: I will make a calamity rise against you

from within your own house.

King David’s family life is ruined forever after.

Given his egregious and well known sin and punishment, what would possess King David to lie like this? And why does our tradition canonize this lie twice? We read the Haftarah tomorrow, and we read it as the Haftarah for parshat Ha’azinu.

What is the lesson here? Do lies become true when we repeat them enough? Or is there some other lesson to be learned?